Tl;dr “Do everything as if it where the last thing you were doing in your life” – Marcus Aurelius

“I’m going to go to the gym this year”, “New year, new me”, “Other things got in my way last year”, “I found what was holding me back”, “This years going to be different”, “I’m going to lose weight”.

Sound familiar?

Here’s a reality check, the New Year is nothing but a change in date.

It’s not some magical end to a groundhog day you thought you were experiencing for the last 365 days, it’s not some magical portal into a new dimension where you can reinvent yourself and you do not become a unicorn when the clock marks midnight. It’s the 1st of January 2016 and just like every other fucking day it starts at 00:00 and ends at 24:00.

In 2006 48% of Americans made a New Years resolution. Of those people 30% said they wanted to exercise more frequently and 29% wanted to lose weight. Of those people 73% will give up.

So why did they fail? Because they are losers.

They are already losers because they waited so long. These are the people that figured the New Year was going to fix their problems through wizardry. The fact is they could have and should have started going to the gym before New Years, as soon as they wanted to they should have gone. If you want to start doing something what are you waiting for? There are many valid answers to this question, after all, a farmer does not pick his oranges until they are ripe. However, waiting for solely a change of a number of the date is a totally invalid answer.

You want to get ripped? Go to your local gym, and buy a pass, you can't afford one? Do free weight exercises, there is literally nothing stopping you from doing some press ups or squats. Doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Do not fall into the path of the mediocre man who waits for everything to fall into his hands.

“You are no longer a boy but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now, you are at the Olympic games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. This is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be Socrates." - Epictetus

This is a message most people could take on board. Setting goals is great, but they mean nothing until you have completed them. Stop thinking and start doing. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it sure as fuck wasn’t built by people sitting around making excuses as to why they couldn’t build it or admiring how pretty their plans looked.