what a year it has been.
who could have guessed as we raised a glass to 2020 last december 31, joyfully spouting our plans for more exercise and less fries, that by march, most self-improvement resolutions would fall by the wayside in a pandemic-induced fog of anxiety and stress.
it’s perhaps one of the biggest paradoxes of 2020: here we are, spending more time at home than ever, with space in our days to finally get to emptying that overflowing drawer, dust off that treadmill, and learn how to knit, yet, we are barely doing any of these things. in fact, we are
drinking
more than ever before, our
mental health
stinks and
working from the couch is killing our bodies
.
so as we look forward to a hopefully much-better 2021, will this be the year for making resolutions to keep? has a year of incredible negativity made us more intent on fulfilling some long-held dreams? and more importantly, has being witness to the daily global devastation of lives made us cast our resolution-making-net further than material things like self-improvement and career growth to what we have missed — our social circles and emotional connections? or, are we going to just skip it?
per carlbring, a professor of psychology at sweden’s stockholm university, thinks that resolutions are actually very much on people’s minds, especially when it comes to reestablishing what has been taken away during the pandemic — namely social contact.