My best friend and I have made it a routine that every weekday morning we go to the gym together at 10am. However, recently we have needed to go a little later in the day due to the fact that a new year has begun and apparently everyone in town is trying to follow through on their new year’s resolution at exactly the same time of the day.

We joke that in a month we will have the gym to ourselves again because everyone will have given up trying to gain the body they dream of. But this got me thinking…

How many people actually change themselves at the start of a new year? Should we be changing ourselves?

It is easy to find something about ourselves that we wish was better, but the thought of putting in the work to change it becomes exhausting. So what do we do? Well, personally I use that as an excuse to hold off on doing anything about it. By the time the day rolls around where I am supposed to get up off the couch and make a change, I feel like I am in a completely different spot than I was when I originally made those ‘absurd’ resolutions. I feel like all I can do is laugh at myself. Instead, I realize that, in fact, something HAS changed…my attitude.

As the end of January nears, many of us may start to realize that those resolutions that we were going to “work so hard on”, have already been laid to rest. Does this mean we should wait until February and start over? Or better yet, should we just start fresh next year?

I hope the answer to those questions is obvious.

I urge you to push yourself to use this year to not just change something about yourself that you feel needs improvement, but use this time to learn who you are. New Year’s resolutions can be used to learn something about yourself and not just change something about yourself. If we fail to accomplish “shedding a few pounds” or “quit smoking”, that’s OK. We need to take the experience, step back and learn a little something about ourselves. We might just be surprised what we find.

Ben Heydt is the Media Director for The Authenticity Project; you can contact Ben at TheAuthenticityProject@gmail.com.