New Year, New Me. We’ve all heard it before. It’s motivating the first time you hear it, and sometimes is still motivating the second time. But when it becomes the third consecutive year, and either you or whoever else has repeated this statement without any evidence to prove this ‘new person’ has ever been created, we all know that it gets aggravating.

So what should we do? On social media, I’ve come across an alternative. Many people have decided to change the phrase to ‘New Year, Same Me’. It makes sense. The milliseconds that change December 31st to January 1st is not a significant amount of time – definitely not enough to expect a whole persona to change.

Don’t get me wrong, I get it, a new year is a fresh start, and it means you can start on a clean slate. Additionally, this year, we were fortunate enough to start the new year on a Monday, which, too, is the start of a new week. New year resolutions are a great way to motivate yourself to do things you kept postponing, and even from the name, we can see that they are only suited for a new ‘fresh start’ opportunity.

What I cannot understand, however, is the necessity to start targets only in this time period. I remember hearing in early December, “I’m cutting all the negative people out of my life in 2018.” It seems quite clear that this person wanted to start 2018 with a positive environment, for many possible reasons. But if you come across something that you aren’t happy with in your life, why wait?

I feel as though, although many people start the new year with a bang, as the phrase goes, they wait only for the clock to strike 00:00 on the January 1st to begin their ‘happier lifestyle’, rather than starting as and when they can. So if I could give one message of advice, or just one thing you take away from this article, I would say – no longer say “New Year, New Me”, but say the unfortunately less catchy, “New Year, Continue Thriving”.