As the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, celebrations ring out across the world to rejoice in the fact that we have made it one more year. We have made it through struggles and advancements, along with disappointments and joys. With the start of a new year, we say that whatever happened the previous year is going to be a jumping off point to be a better version of you than last year. But this drive to evolve into the best you that you can be in 2015 doesn’t take long to hit the bricks because of what I like to call the New Year’s Eve phenomenon.

Toward the end of December 2013 and at the start of 2014, about 45 percent of Americans made a resolution for the following year. The most popular revolution was to lose weight. As you can imagine, or perhaps you experienced this as well, the drive to attain the goal of weight loss came out of the gate strong, but petered out before spring even set in. According to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, 12 percent of gym membership signups in 2013 took place in January alone, as opposed to the 8.3 percent per month for the rest of the year. People take the initial desire to achieve their goal very seriously, which is why lines to use the free weights significantly increase in January. As a member of a gym in Urbandale at the start of 2014, I can attest to the fact that the 5 a.m. crowd in November was significantly small compared to the crowd at the start of the new year.

But this obsession with goals and change doesn’t last long because soon enough, life gets in the way and we go from the mindset of “this is the year I lose weight by making these changes” to “I’ll start the diet on Monday.” In 2013, only 8 percent of people saw their goal through fruition, and I have an unproven theory as to why.

On New Year’s Eve, there is some sort of magic in the air. We’re still experiencing the high of being on break for a few weeks, not having to go to work for a while and spending time with family and friends. The holiday season puts a good majority of people in this unnatural state of schedule change that can last for just long enough to make us think that this is how it always is. So when New Year’s rolls around, we vow to ourselves that we are going to do x, y and z before we return to our normal schedules, but when we do, that’s when it all goes downhill. When we return to work, school, studying and cold, we lose that drive to get up and head to the gym at 5 a.m. and we begin saying, “I’ll start tomorrow.”

But tomorrow is not always guaranteed because events pop up that could make tomorrow a lot more difficult than today seems. So perhaps instead of everyone coming up with individual resolutions, we should all make the choice of being in the mindset of ‘today’ and then have our goals stem from there. This new year should be the year of accountability for your own today and not allowing resolutions to fall by the wayside as the New Year begins to feel not so new anymore.