Resolutions or Social Pressures? Rethinking the Push for Perfection in the New Year
New Year’s resolutions are often framed as positive, an opportunity to reinvent yourself, to grab your life by both hands and mold it into exactly what you always hoped for. In some ways I can understand the allure of starting the year idealistic and ready to change all the things you don’t like about your life. On the other, I wonder about the pressure we put on ourselves and each other to be “the best version” of ourselves. Mostly because I don’t know that everyone is really deciding for themselves what they want that best version to look like. It seems to me that resolutions are often a reflection of what society wants us to be, rather than a thoughtful shift in behavior to the self that we hope to be.
According to a Forbes poll from 2024, these are the most common resolutions last year:
1. Improved Fitness
2. Improved Finances
3. Improved Mental health
4. Lose Weight
5. Improved Diet
These are admirable goals and I love that people want to make serious changes for themselves, as long as they want to make them for themselves and not because they feel pressured to be some idealized, picture perfect, social media version of themselves.
Our culture has evolved into one that idolizes, monetizes, and consumes the perceived perfection of others while selling all manner of products to help the masses reach that same perfection. We seem to have forgotten the beauty of individuality, divergent thought, and community that allows each of us to play to our own strengths and be lifted by others in those areas where perhaps we aren’t as strong.
We know that social connection is important for our physical and mental health. Every article about community and connections tells us that human beings are “hardwired for connection”. We talk less about how that desire for connection often leads to pressure to conform and perhaps poorer mental health outcomes. Research has shown that excessive social media use, one of the most popular ways that people experience social connection now, leads to increased depression and anxiety. This is primarily due to the constant comparisons that are being made between the self and the version of the self that we see idealized.
As you think about the new year and hope to make some shifts in your life, I would encourage you to be mindful about what your ideal life would look like if no one ever told you what it should be. Reach deep and explore where your desires come from and if they belong to you, or if they’re just things you’ve been told you should want.
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