HowTo:Make a New Year's resolution
This article is a guide on how to properly make a New Year's resolution with the objective of fulfilling it. New Year's resolutions are commonly made in a bid to adopt a new practice, forego a harmful one, or otherwise do something to improve oneself. However, not all resolutions are necessary helpful: obviously, resolving to drink more during the New Year might not necessarily lead you to a bright future. This guide, as such and using a few examples, explores the three most notable steps of making a New Year's resolution: to determine what to resolve, to make the resolution proper, and to fulfill said resolution.
Step 1: Determining what to resolve[edit | edit source]
The human experience is one which is filled with resolvable and unsolvable flaws. However, you should not attempt to make a resolution to fix something which you can't fix and can't learn to fix! As such, try looking for something which you can resolve. Common examples are:
- Alcoholism
- Video game addiction
- Exercising
- Weight loss
- Learn a new skill or hobby
- Spend less money
- Quit smoking
Step 2: Making the resolution proper[edit | edit source]
Contrary to popular belief, it is very easy to make a New Year's resolution. Doing so is as simple as saying a sentence:
“ | I resolve to stop drinking alcohol this New Year. | ” |
However, more often than not, New Year's resolutions are made in list form, since more than one tends to be made at a time. Usually, these tend to be in bullet point form, such as:
- Stop drinking alcohol
- Stop playing video games
- Exercise 3 hours per day (etc.)
Step 3: Making your resolution happen[edit | edit source]
This is where the fun part begins! Over the course of the next twelve months, you'll have to fulfill the resolutions you have set for yourself. Most New Year's resolutions do not have a strict timeframe, but if you want to challenge yourself further, you can force yourself to complete the resolution sooner (say, by June). To fulfill a resolution, you have to usually follow a series of steps leading up to a given point (e.g. no longer drinking alcohol): it can sometimes be challenging to go from A to Z directly. Try to explicitly break down each resolution into distinct, easy-to-achieve steps: this will help you reach your New Year's resolution much sooner and/or more easily.
Since it is difficult to explain how exactly a New Year's resolution happens, this guide will provide a few examples of common resolutions and how to fulfill them over the course of a year.
Quitting alcohol[edit | edit source]
The steps to quitting alcohol is invariably the same for anyone who hasn't abstained for the past year: stop drinking alcohol. It's that simple. In order to force yourself to not have any access to alcohol, the following steps should be undertaken as early during the year as possible:
- Selling off any beer, wine, spirits or other alcoholic drinks, or giving them away to a friend, family member or foe;
- Stopping yourself from going to the local bar, pub, restaurant or alcohol-serving venue;
- Avoiding the alcohol aisle in your local supermarket or grocery store;
- Filling fake beer cans with something unpleasant to drink, such as blood or urine, to reduce the temptation.
Afterwards, the only thing which needs to be done is to wait. Unlike many other common resolutions, quitting alcohol only takes a few weeks if done correctly.
Note that there is a very good chance you may die during the process, especially if you have been a raging alcoholic this past year.
Resolving video game addiction[edit | edit source]
Video game addiction, unlike alcoholism, is purely tied to the brain's reward system and is unrelated to any substance. As such, the trick to resolving VGA is to manipulate the brain's reward system into forgetting that video games provide a serotonin boost. Any method may be used. The following example is one which uses alcohol, a readily available substance, to resolve video game addiction.
- Sell off or lock off your video game console(s).
- Purge your computer(s) of any video games.
- Delete any video games found on your phone.
- Delete that precious RPG account you spent $1,000 on last year.
- Unplug the Internet so you won't end up playing web browser-based video games.
- Whenever tempted to play a video game, allow yourself one standard drink's worth of alcohol.
- Get addicted to alcohol.
- Forget you are addicted to video games.
- ...
- Profit!
Following this, it is recommended to follow the "quitting alcohol" guidelines mentioned above, in order to avoid having to deal with another addiction. It usually is safe to re-plug the internet once you forget about your video game addiction.
The main risk with this method is that it may be dangerous if you become a raging alcoholic before managing to hook yourself off video games. The combination of both addictions existing has been scientifically proven to be almost always lethal after one year. As such, care must be taken prior to attempting to stop addiction in this way.
Exercising more[edit | edit source]
(TBD)