Why New Year’s Resolutions Suck…But I’m Still Doing Them

New Year, New You…ugh, amirite? It’s almost like hating new year’s resolutions has gotten as tired as the resolutions themselves at this point. 

I’m not quite ready to circle back around to loving the concept yet, but this year I’ll admit I found myself craving some sort of feeling of change. And if my personal network is any indication, I’m not the only one. 

Catching up with friends over the holidays, I was blown away by how consistent the refrain was. Every single (and taken) person I talked to was looking to shake things up. Whether they were hoping for a new job, a new boyfriend or girlfriend, or a new feeling of purpose…it was shocking how universal the feeling seemed to be.

Is there something in the air? I’m not an astrology girlie so maybe the planets are messing with us right now 🤷‍♀️ Perhaps the current political climate is contributing to the feelings of restlessness. Or maybe it’s more a product of my age as myself and my network reach mid-thirties and start looking back more than looking forward. No matter the cause, it’s clear that this is a pretty universal feeling atm. So instead of over-analyzing it, I want us to think about what we can do to address it. 

Enter: The New Year. 

I’m generally pretty anti-new year rhetoric. I’m a borderline obsessive proponent of constant evolution. I believe that we as humans should always be striving for new developments and “waiting” for the last digit of the year to change is simply a crutch that we can grab onto to make a single grand proclamation about our lives that we will promptly drop the ball on after 3-6 weeks. 

But what if instead of choosing snarkiness this year, we decided to lean into optimism? What if there are ways to embrace the energy of the “new year” mentality without letting it be toxic? That’s what I’ve decided to try this year. (At least for right now, dw, snarkiness will continue to dominate elsewhere.)

If you’re with me then let’s do it together. 

Rather than making any massive pronouncements about a step change in our daily lives, I want to encourage us all to do some deeper introspection about what we are each looking for out of this next year. To drill down into where your personal desire for change is coming from. 

Let’s start with a few questions to ask yourself (if you keep a journal, this is your moment to whip out the pen & paper): 

• What would you like to look different about your life in a year?
  • On January 1, 2026, are you hoping you’ll have a new job? A new boyfriend? A new home? Maybe some new friends or social connections? 
  • Write out a few sentences about how you envision your life to look one year from now. Get as detailed as you can. Fantasize as much as you want. 
    • For me, this could be things like having an agent or editor for my novel which I’m hoping will give me feelings of collaboration that I’ve really been missing professionally this year.
• What were your favorite moments of 2024?
  • I’m talking specific experiences, not broad time periods like “my trip to Finland” (which was great, btw, thx for asking). Write out the top ~5 moments you had last year where you felt happiest or the most “yourself”.
    • For example, one of mine is when I was in Paris for the Olympics last summer (#humblebrag) and snagged some last minute tickets to the men’s synchronized diving final. While I had a blast at every single Olympic event I was lucky enough to go to, something about this one just felt above and beyond.
  • Take a look at what you wrote down. Are there any patterns?
    • My diving example highlights a lot of the themes I identified myself — new experiences, travel, spending time with friends. But a surprise I hadn’t really thought about until I wrote this all down also popped up: spontaneity. There were two other moments on my list that had a key element of being impromptu or in the moment. Food for thought.
    • Look for tidbits like this that can help you better understand what made the experiences so great to you. This will help you think about how to pull those themes forward into the new year.
• Who were the people you felt happiest around last year?
  • I’ll admit I added this one after listening to Tinx’s podcast episode a few days ago, and I’m so glad I did. Taking the time to think about who in your life brings you the most joy is really important. And for me it was a harsh dose of reality…I couldn’t think of five people to make this list. What does that tell me? A key area of reflection for me going into the next year is going to have to be my personal relationships. 

Ok, that’s a good amount of reflection. Now I want us to think into the future. Given how we want our lives to look one year from now, and the themes we identified in our reflection — what are some goals that we can make for the next year? 

Here I literally made a freeform list of things I’d like to do, then bucketed them into habits (short term), skills (medium term), and high-level objectives (long term). This helps me figure out what activities I might want to make changes to today vs what I can take small incremental steps towards over the next few months. My hope is that bucketing the items this way can make it feel less daunting and more exciting. 

An example of a short-term habit would be eating a larger variety of vegetables (hello, vitamins), versus a new skill which would be along the lines of taking a CPR certification class. Long term objectives would be things like finding an agent for my novel ( 🙏) or deciding if this newsletter needs to morph into something else in the coming months. 

The key difference between this exercise and more traditional new year’s resolutions is that I want your lists to be fluid, and not everything needs to be acted on immediately. In fact, it’s good to spread it all out. The new year lasts longer than the first few weeks of January! So instead of trying to make a bunch of changes at once and inevitably failing, this year I’m proposing we harness this “new year” energy to do some serious exercises in reflection like the above and use it as the starting point for an exciting new phase in our lives — not just a single moment. 

And in the spirit of the new year lasting longer than the first few days (sorry, Larry David), I’m going to post this more than a week into the new year because that’s when I finally started getting my mojo back after the weird Wednesday holidays and getting back into some semblance of a routine at home. See? Change happens whenever we feel like it.