So apparently 8 per cent of us will keep our New Year's Resolutions, which means that a cool 92 per cent of us will come across the list we wrote (Only drink once a week! Go for a run every day! Be the sort of person who can feasibly buy a dog and people don't look at each other with expressions that say 'should you stop her doing this or should I?'!) somewhere around March and get filled with a sadness that's part nostalgic for the hope we once felt and part loathing for our total lack of willpower.
It's time to stick our middle finger up to New Year's resolutions. Literally. I'm talking about every magazine and every person who spouts about their NYRs while they sip elderflower tea on your first big night out of 2015 before going home at 10.30. Every time someone or something talks about resolutions, just flip them (or it) the bird and feel the rush of power course through your veins. Your self assured veins.
Self assured because hey, you know who you are and you know that you can't change who you are on Jan 1st, just like you can't change yourself on October 28th. Or June 4th. It's all balls mate.
Of course, if there's something big in your life that you need to sort out - a hard drugs problem, drinking every day before breakfast, continually making work colleagues cry - then by all means use Jan 1 as your kickstarter. Everyone needs a boost. But things like giving up social smoking, running, drinking fresh lemon squeezed into hot water and, y'know, doing one thing every day that scares you? Not going to happen.
And that's okay, because you're not the only one - as the 8 per cent statistic clearly shows, we're all screwing up our resolutions and feeling like a failure. Don't believe me? Here are five succinct reasons why new years resolutions are not worth stressing out over, as told by the people who've been burned by their allure.
Why you shouldn't quit smoking
'Every year I say I'm going to quit smoking, and I've been saying this for eleven years. By midnight I'm so hammered I smoke through it, then smoke for the rest of the evening and promise myself it properly starts on Jan 1st. Then, because I'm so hungover the next day, I smoke all day and say to myself that it's the 6th that the resolution really starts. Then this never happens because I've already broken it, so I just keep smoking... It's the most ridiculous time to try and stop.'
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Lena, 26, London
**Why you shouldn't make a list and stick it on your door **
'Without wanting to sound like a depressive, I had my resolutions on the door of my dorm room at uni for a year and I got progressively more upset as the year went on. Every time I got up and left my room I was confronted with my failure. Can't remember what they said now, but I know 'no pizza' was one of them because one night I'd been dumped by my boyfriend and was eating pizza and ended up setting fire to the list with my lighter and getting reprimanded by the university for vandalism.'
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Lucy, 22, London
**Why it's actually counterproductive **
'Every year all I want to do is go to the gym three times a week. This year I'm not going to set myself up wth false hope and just fuck the whole list thing off - I need to accept that I'm not going to go to the gym. Once you accept that stuff, then you can figure out other ways to achieve the same goal that actually work with your schedule.'
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Hannah, 25, Leeds
Why you should never tell other people about your resolutions
'One year me and my bezzie swapped lists so we could keep tabs on the other. Hers was about drinking water, not smoking weed and going vegetarian, mine was cutting out white wine and only drinking on Fridays. She caught me staggering around in my room drunk on a weeknight and I dont even think it was February. It caused quite a lot of tension for a few days, because I thought she was so smug until we both got drunk (on a Friday) and she admitted that the week before, she'd smoked loads of weed, got the munchies and eaten a Morley's [shit fried chicken chain].'
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Clare, 25, London
Why it can actually be near-fatal to keep new year's resolutions
'I went running because it was my new year's resolution and ran into a skip. I broke both my arms.'
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Sophie, 24, Cheshire
Enough said.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.