And you, what is your podium of good resolutions?
January.
A new year begins.
And like all renewals, this is the perfect opportunity to make good resolutions, to launch personal challenges that we would like to take up but never really take time to.
Who says good resolution, says first of all a commitment towards oneself… But in fact, it is not uncommon for these resolutions to be made in front of witnesses, in order to make the moment more solemn!
Among students, it is often during festive moments to celebrate the end of the year that discussions on this subject take place, sometimes with the help of cocktails and other enthusiasm enhancers.
As a result, the bar is often set a little high… and the results often a little disappointing. A British study conducted a few years ago showed that nearly 9 out of 10 New Year’s resolutions failed, remaining only at the stage of wishful thinking.
These good resolutions tend to be very similar from one individual to another within the same country, within the same culture. This is normal: they are also the result of a common way of life, of shared habits.
In France, each year, a few good resolutions win all the votes. On the podium, we regularly find :
1. Lose weight
And yes, nothing surprising in THE country of gastronomy, the only one where people are able to discuss for hours about a menu, a recipe, a taste experience. In France, eating is more than a response to a physiological need, it is an art of living… and also a source of excess and abuse!
It is therefore logical that a large proportion of French people place weight loss on the podium of their personal challenges for the New Year.
2. Doing sports
Here again, “eating too much” is not far off, although it is more a question of “de-sedentarizing”.
In France, employment is increasingly tertiary, the population spends most of its time sitting behind a desk and mobility is so easy (elevators, public transport networks, escalators, travelators and other mechanical monsters) that opportunities to move around are melting like snow in the sun…
So here we are, resorting to sports becomes a priority for many people. A nice object of good resolution. It’s actually quite funny to compare the number of joggers walking in urban parks between January and the rest of the year: the peak of sportsmen and women literally jumps out.
3. Take time for yourself and your loved ones
Still on the podium of good resolutions: spend more time taking care of yourself, your well-being or that of your loved ones or your family.
You know it well, especially if you combine your studies with a student job: life in France’s big cities is going by at full speed. Metro-school-sleep or even metro-school-work-sleep (editor’s note: saying in French « métro-boulot-dodo): the refrain leaves little room and especially little energy for the rest.
It is however essential because the human being is also a social being: he blossoms in relationships with others, in personal accomplishment such as artistic creation, in the discovery of new places, new people…
Well aware of all this, many French people aim to live a more fulfilling life by taking more time for themselves and for their loved ones.
You may have made some good resolutions for 2022 yourself. Maybe they resemble the major French trends, maybe they are very different, maybe they are impregnated with your culture of origin… In any case, whatever yours are, here is a good news to end this article. Willpower, well, you can train it. The web is full of articles full of tips to help you keep your commitments, your promises made to yourself.
And at FIGS Education, when it comes to good resolutions, we make only one, and it’s the same one every year: to continue to reinvent ourselves every day in order to further improve the support we provide to you.