The Origins of Making New Year’s Resolutions
And what we can learn from it.
This year, I did not make any resolutions before January 1st. Like most people, I woke up on the day and completed my morning routine. The sun rose and set just like any day but I felt unusually optimistic and hopeful.
Feeling curious about my unexplainable positivity, I started wondering if humans in ancient times also felt the same way at the start of the new year. Could it be an emotional behaviour arising from rituals practised in ancient times and passed down through generations?
About 4,000 years ago, the Babylonians would make promises to their Gods at the beginning of the new year. When crops were planted every March (not January), the Babylonians made promises to pay their debts and return any borrowed objects in hopes to be blessed with a good year.
It was Julius Caesar who later established January 1st as the beginning of the new year in 46 B.C. The Romans named January after the Roman 2-faced God, Janus. By offering sacrifices, they believed that Janus could look back in the previous year and ahead into the future.
The belief in the ability to start over in the new year is a familiar one. Though ancient practices of the Babylonians and Romans may not be followed to this day, making new year resolutions may be a modern interpretation of the centuries-old practices.
But why confine to making goals for self-betterment only in January? Think about the times when you were determined to change your life — when you started college, set out to achieve a list of goals before 30, or want to settle down by 40. If you noticed, we tend to break our lives into time brackets when making life-pivoting decisions.
Research shows that we are drawn to moments which bring us the “fresh start” effect. The effect is the feeling that you get at the start of the new year, or a new season (spring) or decade (age). By being aware of how such moments can provide us with the necessary motivation, we can increase our chances of success in achieving our goals.
Wharton’s professor and researcher, Katherine Milkman, explained —
“Those chapter breaks provide an opportunity to capitalize on that feeling of a fresh start and get people to pursue their goals with more vigor.”
So, the next time that you want to develop and maintain new positive habits in your life, consider when you can start one with the “fresh start” effect.
A low hanging fruit could be to treat every week as an opportunity to start over. I look forward to Mondays like my weekly life restart button. Every time I want to start something new, I would choose to do it on Mondays if I could. By having this mini ritual, any failure becomes less daunting and it helps me to focus on growth.
From discovering the origins of making new year’s resolutions to learning about the “fresh start effect”, the key message here is that success starts with the mind and the timing that inspires you can help you to go further.
