The January Masquerade

Motivation and consistency - why is it so difficult to keep it up?

In a few hours, it will be 2026. To a lot of us, the month of January is nothing more than just a digestion period for whatever was eaten during the holidays. Though, did you know it is also the busiest month worldwide for subscriptions in any field or domain? Magazines, sports clubs, language classes, music lessons, marathons... Sky is the limit, right? The problem being that once you have reached the sky, there's only one way back and the fall might hurt a bit. To me, the worst part of January dwells in that awful question random family members and friends ask: what are your resolutions for the year to come?

Well, I don't know Aunt Karen. According to last year's numbers; staying alive, not getting too fat or too sick from refined sugars and pesticides, not finding out that my husband has a Tinder profile or getting a decently paid job and being able to pay my bills while not having a micromanaging-boss actually sounds like an attractive life plan for the year to come.

Numbers also teach us that this whole masquerade usually stops by mid-February. And I'm thankful for it.

No one has ever kept these resolutions seriously throughout a whole year, not to mention a whole life. Or at least, no one that I know of - and I know quite a few people. It always lasts a few days, weeks or months for the bravest among us. Consequently, I'm wondering: what's missing? What is it that makes us give up when it comes to long-term commitment? AH. That question sounded way deeper than it should have, right? You read what you read and I said what I said. Yes, we could pointlessly debate over love interests and long-term commitment in a too-long and too-shallow podcast but we won't. For now, what I want to focus on is long-term commitment to ourselves.

At first, I thought that those promises and our overall failure to keep them alive were somehow impacted by outside events. Creating bridges between what had happened and unconscious decisions I had made was the easy part. It took me a while to realize that those choices had already been made for a while now and what had happened was simply the last bit of proof I needed to gather the courage to move on and do what had to be done. In fewer words: I was making up excuses for myself. Apparently, getting wiser mainly lies in the ability to see how difficult it is to lie to others over time and how easy it gets to lie to ourselves. I can tell a good lie everybody will believe and that, tells you a lot about my character.

Truth is, if I didn't continue that diet, if I stopped going to the gym, if I never scheduled that next appointment or if I left that class and never got back, it just was because it didn't make me happy or not as happy as society expected me to be. We aren't animals. Primary instincts aren't everything we rely on anymore. A human life deprived of happiness, love, admiration or a single meaning, is pointless. Yes, the excitement of new beginnings fades away just like the snow does when it meets the warmth of the sun. And, that is just fine. Who does the exact same thing over and over for a lifetime and calls it happiness? Let that warmth spring new resolutions in your soul and see how good that feels.

After a while, I got to the conclusion: it is our duty to quit. We must quit doing whatever we're doing the instant it doesn't make us happy anymore. Breaking those resolutions—not keeping these promises—is the direct result of silenced emotional battles led in the shadows. I believe that forcing ourselves to continue on with those behaviours is the dangerous part of the process. That is the exact moment we lose focus, the moment we start not caring anymore. Meaningless tasks are what we should be afraid of as when it is no longer something we're doing for our own good, it becomes something we want to prove to ourselves we can continue doing. That promise is no longer rooted deep in one's wish to become a better version of one's self but is now intertwined to one's ego. That same shameless ego relying on others' opinions and approval. Look! Look at me! Look how good I am at convincing myself that what I'm doing is for my own good! Look at me doing something that I hate for what, I was told, is the greater good... Look at me obeying but not questioning nor listening to my deepest desires and ignoring my own needs to keep a promise I made to myself or to honor a signature I made on a piece of paper.

Let me remind you that promises, honor, signatures and contracts are human concepts imagined and made to build the world we are living in. Do you know what Nature calls a contract? Worthless.

There will always be voices to tell us that those concepts and promises are the foundations of centuries of evolution. We all know those voices, we have all heard them before. They are the same as the ones we hear around the table at family dinners, when blowing birthday candles or cheering our names when receiving that degree we have been working so hard to get.
The same voices that tell us we should be grateful for what was invented, built and done so far as we wouldn't be were we are if it wasn't for it. True. Though, know that I live in this world too and still, every single day I wonder: what would the world look like if we were to let go of what was done and of our resolutions and just started working towards a greater future? One that would be based on billions of individual moments of happiness to turn into a bigger and brighter tomorrow. I reassure myself thinking that as long as there are people like me imagining such a world, there is still hope for it to exist one day. I probably won't see it but that doesn't matter one bit.

People get confused as their morals tells them that hoping for something better for themselves and for the world means that what we had so far wasn't so great or simply, bad. Immediately adding judgement to the mix and calling it ungratefulness. It is not. The only argument we need here is that nothing ever was plainly, morally good or bad. It has always been a bit of both. Anything that has ever been human, has never been perfect. Why would our choices be?

Perhaps, this year's resolutions should be more about what you deeply want and need for yourself and a bit less about what you were taught you should want and need. Try on resolutions just like you would try on a new shirt. If it doesn't fit, find another and keep on trying. Keep on trying until you have tried it all out. Then maybe, you will be free to say that you don't need new resolutions anymore as you have found your happiness.