Yet another year has gone by, leaving us with a new decade and new year with infinite potential. It offers new beginnings, fun traditions and of course, the making of new year’s resolutions. It’s also a great time to re-evaluate your life if you want to change anything this year.

New year’s is monumental, despite what any pessimist may tell you. The impact and influence of welcoming a new year has is great. People immediately become inspired to alter aspects of their life and do many different things to ensure a prosperous year. Across the globe, many partake in various traditions to positively affect the upcoming year.

In the Philippines, people eat round foods and carry coins because round shapes symbolizes money they hope to acquire in the new year. In Italy and Vietnam, they wear new clothes to have a fresh start to the new year. Here, the black community has had a long standing tradition of making black-eyed peas to bring us luck in the upcoming year. Despite the traditions being a bit silly, they carry a lot of culture and showcase the world’s diversity. Even if they don’t guarantee us our hopes, they are still fun to participate in. Throughout history they have allowed us hope that things will get better and go right for us eventually. The different cultures’ ways of celebrating tell a wonderful story of our backgrounds and what’s important to us. These traditions are a part of history and it would be sad to leave them behind if we stopped caring about new year’s.

On the topic of “new”, the new year automatically means something major: it symbolizes a fresh start, a blank canvas, and the opportunity to leave negativity from the past year behind. Why bring bad energy into the new year when there’s no need? The new year brings a sense of renewal which in turn prompts us all to adjust the stagnant life we could be living. With everyone on the same page it’s easier to break ties and get life moving in the right direction. It’s time to break habits and reform yourself. Without New Year’s, everyone would be stuck in a cycle of the same thing.

Look we all know no one follows their New Year’s resolutions despite the fact that every year we make them. While I don’t know the logic behind why we can’t keep the resolution, I would assume you’d be better at following through on something at the beginning of year vs the middle. It’s a good practice but since they are never successful let’s all make the decision to call them goals. The problem is that we put too much pressure on them. You can want to change and not make a resolution, especially when the resolution is meaningless. Stop making short term superficial goals that you aren’t going to follow. Instead integrate small habits that you want to add in life so it’s not an unachievable dream. Be inspired by the new year!

Overall, New Year’s matters because it gives us the time to put life into perspective. We are able to gather together to ring in the New Year with the most important people in your life and reset our potentially stagnant mindset. It all gives us a moment to see if we are being proactive and pursuing life in the best way possible. Make the decade count and go live your best life!