Are New Year’s Resolutions Outdated? How to Make a Real Change in 2025
New Year’s Resolutions have slowly transformed from a tradition to a marketing ploy. Maybe it’s time to get rid of them altogether.
When you watch the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, you see revelers in the crowd wearing giant, festive hats sponsored by Planet Fitness. Then, Hello Fresh and Factor bombard you with ads, trying to convince you to start eating right.
The marketing message is clear: What you’re doing is not working. To have a successful new year, you must change something about yourself.
While it’s always a good idea to stop smoking, most New Year’s resolutions set you up for failure. One tub of salty, buttery popcorn can destroy your self-esteem before the calendar turns to February. There’s even a date for this failure. January 10 was this year’s Quitter’s Day, when you are expected to throw in the towel on your resolution.
So instead of stopping what you’re doing, maybe you should start doing something new. Here are five ideas for positive things you can do to improve your life in 2025.
1. Read different genres of books
Avid readers could benefit by expanding their literary horizons. If you always read romance novels, try a Western or science fiction. If you’re into fantasy, maybe try a few biographies. The library has many aisles that you may not have visited. Don’t worry–your favorite section will still be there when you get back.
2. Visit different places
Bucket lists exist for a reason. We have a whole world to explore and limited time to do it. Sit down with your travel partners and write down the top destinations in the U.S. and the world that you’d like to visit.
If any of your choices match, you can start planning your next vacation–even if money and free time are too scarce to pack your bags right now.
If money is tight, you could ask yourself, are there interesting places in my hometown that I’ve never visited? I grew up in Ohio as a huge football fan, and somehow I didn’t visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame until I was 22.
Also, what kind of trips do you usually take? You can switch that up, too. If you usually visit beaches or theme parks, you could try historic tours of cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, London, Paris, or Rome.
If you’ve never embarked on a cruise or taken a mission trip, you can give that a try. Who knows? It might become your new favorite vacation style.
3. Help different people
If you want to help others but don’t want to travel across the globe, you can find people who need assistance in the U.S. For example, my daughter has traveled to Los Angeles to work with the homeless population as part of the Fred Jordan Mission.
The City of Angels has also been devastated by wildfires recently, and the Southeast is still recovering from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. Many relief organizations are still helping these victims, and you could lend your financial or physical support.
Even closer to home, you can help kids across the globe by working with Feed My Starving Children. This organization travels to churches around the country for food-packing events that benefit needy communities in Africa. You can get together with your friends for an enjoyable evening event and make a real difference.
4. Welcome different guests
If you enjoy entertaining at home, consider expanding your guest list. If you regularly invite the same friends, ask them to bring people you haven’t met. You may make a lifelong friend, and you will certainly learn something new from these different guests.
5. Think about yourself differently
Despite being a writer for my entire professional life, I have never considered myself a creative person. That changed slightly when I taught a homeschool writing class called One-Year Adventure Novel. My wife said, “You need to write a novel along with your students.”
Fiction was a stretch for me because I was always a news writer, and later, I wrote history books about professional wrestling. Then, my wife challenged me to expand my little story (which she calls “the pamphlet”) into a full-sized novel.
Suddenly, I started coming up with new characters and storylines for my “Wrestling Is Real” universe, and I plan on sticking the landing sometime in the middle of the year. For the first time in my life, I classify myself as a creative person.
The best thing you can do in the new year is remove the word “can’t” from your vocabulary. For example, you can replace “I can’t afford to go on vacation to Hawaii” with “I can visit a new museum that’s an hour away” and “I can throw a Hawaiian-themed dinner party.”
If you focus on what you can do, you may be amazed at what you will accomplish in 2025.
