New Year’s Resolutions: An Inspiration Story

Resolutions have had a vibe shift but they can work

Welcome to 2023: the year when New Year’s resolutions got a vibe shift. Online, I’m seeing an anti-New Year’s narrative that’s all: ‘don’t make changes, you be you.’ And of course, I’m a fan of everyone being themselves, but what if being ourselves means striving for change or wanting to improve?

I understand the disillusionment around making New Year’s resolutions as they often don’t stick, but the desire to see a checkpoint or milestone such as a new year, a new season, a birthday, a break-up or any key moment in our lives to make a change is part of what makes us human. The anti-resolution online discourse (as per usual) doesn’t match up to reality anyway: exercise studios are packed full of optimistic newbies and most people I know have quietly set themselves goals for the new year. 

My hot yoga classes are full of newbies and the other day I had such a person next to me. She was really, really struggling and fair play: hot yoga is HARD. You usually feel nauseous the first time you do it. It’s not for everyone. So respect to this woman for just being there. I would rather be the woman who showed up to class to lie on the mat, than the one who stayed at home and didn’t even try. However, I could feel the frustration oozing off her. I caught her eye as she looked around at others who appeared to be finding it easy. I wanted to turn to her and say this; ‘Lady, I’ve been doing yoga for ten years now and I know that will shock you because I’m not actually that good and I’m just getting by, but this is what TEN YEARS of yoga practice looks like. And, AND it started as a New Year’s resolution. So stop getting cross with yourself and come back next week.’ 

So this is a little story about a New Year’s resolution that stuck. Ten years ago, I decided to try yoga and I can’t remember why. Maybe I thought it’d be good for me, maybe it’s what the cool kids were doing, who knows, but I followed that curiosity onto the yoga mat. It’d turn out that I wasn’t built for it. I’m incredibly stiff. As I stumbled through the poses, my body felt like stone. I didn’t enjoy it and I hated being so visibly bad at something. But I made myself the promise that I’d go every Monday at 7:30 pm, and so I did. Over time, I accepted the limitations of my body: I learnt beginner poses and used blocks for support and then, one day, I began to hate it less. 

It took me five years to be able to do the ‘full’ chaturanga pose. 

Fast forward to now and I’d do yoga every day if I could. I learned that I love hot yoga the most. I love to sweat. The heat keeps me focused in a way that normal-temperature yoga doesn’t. Yoga has become such a big part of my life that I forgot until now that it was ever a New Year’s resolution. 

I’ve always been cynical of New Year’s resolutions because we often set ourselves up to fail. I find it hard not to roll my eyes when people set ambitious, unrealistic or vague goals. But it’s how we set them that’s the problem, not the desire for self-improvement. I try new things all the time and stick to maybe half of them and that’s ok, too. The one habit I struggle most with is my phone use and I find it ironic that so many of these ‘stay the same’ or anti-resolutions posts are on the social media apps that I’m trying to avoid. Mindlessly scrolling is not how I want to spend my time. I literally wrote about it in January 2020, and it remains a battle. I keep putting my phone in other rooms and setting my phone to grayscale mode and setting timers on my apps, but I know that change happens in stages. People in recovery know this, too. And if you mess up? Sometimes we need the false starts before we get to the real one.

We’re not perfect and we never will be, but it’s admirable to want to try new things or to want to feel better in our everyday lives. I want to feel good in myself and to be more conscious of how I spend my time. So if you’ve set resolutions, then please keep going and if you haven’t, it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf.

Happy New Year! 

Tiff’s tips for resolutions that stick

• KNOW YOURSELF: there’s a reason you haven’t made the change before now. See this fact as an opportunity to set a self-aware and realistic aim. It’s fine if you’ll never be someone who gets out of bed at 6am to work out - find a time when you will. 

• SET PROCESS GOALS: Set process, not outcome goals: ‘I’m going to write for 20 minutes every weekday’ vs. ‘I’m going to write a novel’. 

• LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS: You will suck at anything new for a long time. Lean into that discomfort and accept that it’s good for you to be bad at something. 

• CONSISTENCY: Keep showing up and slowly, slowly, one day, you won’t suck anymore. 

• ADD something: I like the positivity and less punishing nature of introducing something into your life, rather than taking something away. A friend of mine who works too hard wants to watch more TV this year, and naturally, this will mean they’ll get more rest and work less. I like to add healthy food (this year it’s specifically wholegrains), rather than take ‘the bad stuff’ away.

• BE SPECIFIC: What exactly are you going to do? I want to be on my phone less, so I turn it onto grayscale from 9pm to 11am every weekday and put it in another room at night and when I’m working.

• ACCOUNTABILITY: How will you be accountable? Do you need friends or a community to do it with? I book exercise classes so that I’ll lose money if I miss them. I sign up to writer’s hour and join other writers on Zoom at 8am every weekday.

• KEEP IT SMALL: If you’ve never done something before, every day is a lot. Start with once a week and keep going. I’m going to start learning Italian for one hour a week. I don’t have the time or attention span to do more. 

• KINDNESS: You will fail at times because that is life, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pick yourself up and start again. The kinder to yourself and less dramatic you are about setbacks, the faster you’ll progress.

I hope that’s been helpful. Do tell me what your resolutions are!

With love, 

Tiffany x