Every new year begins with the tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions. For many people, right when the ball drops is the time we should begin to work on New Year’s resolutions.

This is not the case in my eyes. Setting such goals encourages a lack of steadfastness, creates in us a distorted view of ourselves, and in the end leaves us depressed and disappointed with ourselves.

Instead of making a resolution at the beginning of the year, why not make a goal for yourself today and try your best to achieve that? Why wait until Dec. 31?

I view every day as a brand new opportunity to be better than I was the day before. We should all get into the habit of setting daily goals. We need to start living in the now, since that is the only thing that is guaranteed.

As people set goals that are focused more on themselves, they begin on a dangerous, self-analytical journey. You don’t hear goals like, “I’m going to help my sister with her homework every night“ or “I’m going to start a yoga club.” Goals are becoming more repetitive and sound a lot like “I’m going to be a better girlfriend” or “I’m going to lose weight.”

It troubles me that people seem to have the same goals every year.

It seems like people are never satisfied with themselves. Every year, we look back and decide to highlight all the bad things we have done and all the flaws we still have. No one is looking back and thinking about all the good times they had or the good deeds they did. This systematic practice of negative self-evaluation after every 365 days of our lives must stop.

The Monday we all return to work or school after winter break is probably one of the most stressful days in our lives. We have to break back into our old routines and, at the same time, work on all our New Year’s resolutions. Suddenly, we realize that we can’t manage all of our spontaneous goals. It’s easy to become depressed and quickly dissatisfied with ourselves.

I have nothing against people setting goals. But why wait till the new year? Who knows if we will make it to the next day?

We should be working on ourselves all the time. There are some people who have benefited from setting New Year’s resolutions and have conquered their demons, but I’m pretty sure they all wish they had decided to make a resolution earlier.

New Year’s resolutions blind us to the fact that we are not guaranteed passage into the new year. We spend an entire year doing whatever we like and then choose the new year as a perfect time to decide what changes must be made. We overlook the positives in ourselves and focus on our flaws. Then we set ridiculously hard goals, become overwhelmed, and label that as weakness.

Instead, let’s make goals every day, work on them, monitor our growth, and add more challenges on a regular basis, not just once every 365 days.