Is Spring Actually a Better Time to Make a New Years Resolution?

If you’ve been here for a while, you know I’m not into New Year’s resolutions. To me, they just feel like they put way too much pressure on self-improvement rather than life improvement. And in the dreary month of January, when I’m coming off of the exhausting marathon that is the holiday season, when the days are short and the months feel endless, the last thing I want to do is commit to going to the gym everyday or whatever.

But maybe we’ve had the concept of resolutions wrong all this time. Obviously, a new year does feel like a great time for a fresh start. But spring is also a time for new beginnings, a season of rebirth. And maybe…that makes spring the perfect time for a resolution instead.

This was brought to my attention by the late James Van Der Beek, who made a video arguing for spring to be considered our fresh start. “Why are we celebrating a new year in the dead of winter? Why are we celebrating new beginnings at a time when nature rests?” he said. “The time to celebrate a new beginning and a new you and a new resolution is spring.”

There’s research to support this, and a piece from The Conversation sums it up really well. It all begs the question…should we all just embrace the idea of March resolutions instead of New Year’s resolutions?

Of course, you don’t need a massive cultural shift to decide to do this on your own. You can wake up tomorrow and resolve to meet up with a friend once a week, or hit a step goal everyday, or take up a new hobby. And honestly? There’s a chance you may have more success — early spring just feels like a much more motivating time than January, you know? The only drawback is, you won’t have that community feel of everyone else committing to a resolution at the same time.

At the end of the day, it’s your call to make, (though if you want to mobilize an early spring resolution shift for us to all take up together, I’m all for it!).

But whether you do them in January or March or some other time entirely, I believe resolutions should serve you, not stress you out. If you tried committing to daily gym sessions and you simply couldn’t find the time for it last January, chances are, it’s still going to feel like an overwhelming goal in the spring. But committing to waking up a bit earlier everyday? That may actually feel a little bit easier now that the sun is up a bit earlier.