New Year, New Chance to Change Everything About Me

‘THE BEST OF MY 2023’ posts have made my social media feeds more clogged up than the upstairs toilet over Christmas and Boxing Day, which can only mean one thing. I need to get a plumber. And the new year is upon us.

Naturally, many people make resolutions; a tradition that originated 4000-ish years ago with the Babylonians. They made resolutions as promises to the gods, usually to pay debts or return borrowed items, in exchange for a good year. These days we use them as motivation to better ourselves, which we hope will lead to us having a better year.

It’s great to want to work on ourselves but lots of people put an incredible amount of pressure on themselves to make, often big, changes overnight. This coming right off the back of the most indulgent month of the year. Many of us have been there. Waking up, new year’s day, exclaiming:

‘Now is the time I start doing my bit for the environment. I’m going to cycle to work EVERYDAY from now on and get a SIX PACK in the process. DOUBLE WHAMMY. RESOL2TION.’

Monday rolls around and it’s pouring down. So you give it a miss until the weather’s better. But we live on the Isle of Man. And the weather is never better. So you carry on driving to work and berate yourself for creating more emissions and not sticking to your goal. To make yourself feel better, you drive to McDonalds and order 14 Happy Meals because why would they say ‘Happy’ in the title if they didn’t make you feel happy. But they don’t make you feel happy. In fact, they make you feel UNhappy because now you’re even further from your six pack AND wasting plastic by chucking all the toys in the bin. You vow that NEXT YEAR you’ll start cycling to work everyday because by then climate change will be hitting hard so the weather will be nicer.

Lots of us have experienced the bitter self-disappointment that comes with not keeping up well-intentioned new year resolutions. I think a lot fall down because they come from a place of shame.

Some Common Resolutions

LOSE WEIGHT/GO TO THE GYM.

Negative: I’m overweight. I don’t look anything like any of the women or men shoved in my face in the media, I look like a walking JABBA THE HUTT in comparison to them. It’s no excuse that they’ll have personal trainers and dieticians and I don’t. I’ve started going to the gym EVERY DAY after work. Today was really tiring though so I’m going to skip tonight. But now I feel stressed about missing a day. I should really get up and do something but I’m so tired. Forget it. I’m a failure. I’m ordering a takeaway.

Positive: I accept my body but I’d like to lose a little weight and get a bit fitter for my health and because I think it’d be a nice thing to do. I’ll start by doing exercise once or twice a week.

STOP SMOKING.

Negative: I know smoking is bad for my health so I’ve stopped as my new year’s resolution. But today was really stressful at work so I’ll just have one. Well. If I’ve had one and it’s only 3 days in then I’ve failed and might as well have the whole pack. Mum and Dad are going to be so disappointed.

Positive: I know smoking isn’t good for my health so I’m going to choose to try and stop. But I know addiction is difficult to break so I’m going to to take it a step at a time and wean myself off gradually. 

CUT DOWN SCREEN TIME.

Motivation: Do you know what your average screen time currently is? TWENTY FIVE HOURS A DAY. DID YOU LEARN NOTHING FROM BLACK MIRROR. YOU’RE LIKE A CHARACTER RIGHT OUT OF AN EPISODE. AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY. Get off your phone and take in the moment you anti-social cretin! 

Better Motivation: I’d like to come off my phone a bit more but I know breaking a habit is difficult so I’ll do it in phases.

All these initial motivations come from a place of lacking, a place of ‘I’m not good enough, I need to be better’, which is different to feeling enough and wanting to continue growing healthily.

We could do with a transition period out of Christmas to ease back into reality rather than going into the new year holding the whip that we intend on cracking ourselves with when we inevitably miss a day of Duolingo. But we’re inclined to want to change ourselves at the start of the year. It’s known as the Fresh Start Effect. Psychologically it refers to motivational qualities the first of January holds to cleanly symbolise a new beginning. Overlooking the fact that Christmas technically runs until 6 January.

Even with the best of intentions, it’s easy to become complacent. We live in a time where the work/life balance people so desperately crave is an incredibly difficult thing to attain, which, in turn, makes it difficult to achieve big resolutions.

Changing massive societal flaws to help people live happier, more balanced lives is needed but would be yet another resolution we’re unlikely to achieve. Definitely not in the immediate future anyway. Unless we move to Sweden. So instead, I suggest this:

Set achievable goals that are specific.

Instead of putting loads of pressure on yourself by trying to break a habit or make a new one immediately, break it down into digestible steps.

Want to cut down on alcohol? You don’t need to do dry January. Instead, give yourself some leeway and say ‘instead of having a drink whenever I want, I’ll just have one or two on a Friday / Saturday.’

Fancy reading more? You don’t need to inhale a whole book in one go. Try reading one page a day before bed. And if you don’t like the book, stop reading it. Life is too short and the world is filled with too many awesome books to punish yourself by forcing yourself to finish something you’re not enjoying.

Setting achievable goals is an act of self kindness. It’ll help boost your confidence and make you feel good, which is what the majority of us want from resolutions. So, I’d recommend giving it a try. Unless you’re a masochist or are indebted to a God. Then you’d better get on with quitting smoking immediately before you get smote.

If that fails, I suggest setting new year’s resolutions that won’t make you feel shit if you don’t do them. Such as:

• Spend more time with your sexist uncle
• Ask for more pictures of your friend’s baby
• Start a lawn mowing journal
• Take pictures of roundabouts
• Watch the latest Kingsman film

I guarantee you won’t feel bad about yourself if you end up doing none of these things.