So-called New Year wishes can be of two types: in some you're directly involved and can somehow influence what happens; in others your involvement is zero. The first kind includes buying a new flat (whether with savings or a mortgage), getting an education or qualification, passing your driving test, winning a sports marathon. The second kind includes your favourite team winning a major tournament (sorry, Milan, I didn't wish for that), the wedding of close relatives (you can have a view and some sway with the couple you'd like to see married, but the final decision is theirs, at least in most countries), the pandemic ending so that the noisy drunk neighbours upstairs whom the state can't touch stop making a racket and flooding you out.
Wishes of the second type have a right to exist — as long as they're not pure fantasy, like advanced life under Europa's ice sending a signal to Earth before we send another probe there in a couple of years. But don't kid yourself about such wishes; be prepared for your team not to win or the pandemic not to end. Too many factors are at play, and crucially — you can't affect any of them.
What about wishes people make that are directly about themselves? In a way it's a bit odd. Everyone knows perfectly well that a rolling stone gathers no moss — or rather, that water doesn't flow under a stone that doesn't move — yet they still believe in magic and fairy tales and think a wish made on New Year's Eve will come true. I think it's wrong of friends, acquaintances, relatives and colleagues to say "Make a wish for the New Year" and hold out hope where there's almost none. I'm not saying there's none at all. On the contrary, if someone makes a wish and then does everything to make it happen, that's no longer a wish but a goal, and they're gradually moving towards it. It's perfectly normal and even right to state your goals again so you don't forget them and keep your focus on them. But most of the time people just make wishes with nothing to back them up.
I haven't made a New Year wish for about five years. Instead, by New Year's Eve I already have goals for the coming year. Concrete goals, well thought through, spelled out in detail and, most importantly, realistically achievable. That's what I urge you to do on New Year's Eve — or better, long before it, because on the night itself you can't step back from the positive emotions and describe your goals soberly (in every sense). Once you've formulated and set them, you can allow yourself on New Year's Eve to repeat them in your head (or even out loud, for a public commitment) one more time. How to set goals properly we'll talk about in more detail in the practical book.
