Dwain Northey (Gen X)

New Year’s Eve arrives every year wearing the same costume: glitter, countdowns, and a long list of promises we suddenly expect ourselves to keep forever. It is the one night when time feels negotiable, as if the simple act of flipping a calendar gives us the power to rewrite habits that took years—sometimes decades—to form. And so we make resolutions: bold, absolute declarations that sound good at midnight and feel heavy by January 10th. By February, many of them are forgotten, or at best remembered with a shrug and a joke about “starting again next year.”

The problem isn’t motivation. The problem is the word resolution itself. A resolution implies firmness, finality, and zero tolerance for failure. It suggests a clean break from the past: I will never do this again. I will always do that instead. But life is not a courtroom, and we are not on trial. Real change doesn’t happen through ultimatums; it happens through practice, patience, and repetition—often messy and imperfect. When a resolution slips, even once, it tends to collapse entirely. One missed workout becomes proof that the whole effort was pointless. One bad day becomes an excuse to abandon the year.

That’s why New Year’s Eve would serve us better if we replaced resolutions with intentions.

An intention is softer, but not weaker. It is grounded in good faith rather than rigid expectation. To say I intend to take better care of my body is different from saying I resolve to go to the gym every day. Intentions acknowledge reality: some days you will be tired, discouraged, overwhelmed, or human. They leave room for recalibration instead of self-punishment. An intention says, This is the direction I hope to move in, not This is the standard by which I will judge myself.

Intentions also honor process over performance. They focus less on dramatic transformation and more on alignment—on asking, How do I want to show up more often? You might intend to be more patient, more curious, more present. You might intend to waste less energy on things you can’t control or spend more time doing what actually nourishes you. These are not goals you “fail” in a single moment; they are orientations you return to again and again.

There’s also something deeply honest about intentions. They admit uncertainty. They accept that growth is nonlinear. They don’t pretend that January 1st magically erases old wiring. Instead, they respect the fact that change is cumulative, built in small decisions made on ordinary days—especially the days when motivation is low and no one is counting down for you.

So maybe this New Year’s Eve doesn’t need fireworks of self-reinvention. Maybe it just needs a quieter commitment: not a resolution carved in stone, but an intention held with care. You intend to try. You intend to learn. You intend to do better when you can and forgive yourself when you don’t. That may not sound as dramatic at midnight, but it has a far better chance of still being alive in March—and beyond.

In the end, intentions don’t demand perfection. They invite persistence. And that, more than any resolution, is what actually changes a life.