In this month’s column, Farrah Saville looks at New Year’s resolutions and asks if “letting go of the pressures of new” will be better for all of us.
In the wise words of Queen Missy Elliot, one has to ask when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, “Is it worth it?”. There is an intense amount of pressure that comes with the start of the new year: new beginnings, new life, new health goals to reach and new diets, but what if we didn’t endeavor to commit to big changes at the beginning of the new year? Would it mean no progress and no change?
Often, at the start of a new year, we set unrealistic expectations for ourselves and find it difficult to get back up when we don’t reach them. Before you know it, it’s March and you’ve spent copious amounts of money on butter lettuce that goes to the vegetable drawer in the fridge to die and have used your gym membership once. Committing to big changes is difficult; so why do we put all this pressure on ourselves? I blame good marketing and pure toxic positivity. For some, the idea of a new year is the possibility of being able to change and see the newness of possibilities, for others… it’s not quite as simple.
What if we just accepted ourselves as is and instead of trying to create new goals for a new year accepted that change was not necessary in existential terms but a lot more practical. Wouldn’t it be easier to accept our flaws, continuously improve, and then begin the process of change instead of putting so much pressure on a new year? There is already so much intensity that comes with a new year – change, expectations, hopes, dreams; so why add the stress of big, altering goals like losing 20 kilos or running 5km a day. Maybe the ideal would be to build small habits instead of a resolution. I mean, even the word RES-O-LUTION feels so final, so big; its meaning: “a firm decision to do or not to do something” – that’s a big commitment.
Is the key not to wait for 365 days to pass to start again, start new but instead treat every day, every moment as a chance to start new, a chance to begin again. Imagine going into 2024 strong, achieving a small win each day: getting up earlier, sleeping eight hours a day and making sure to eat vegetables with each meal? And simply by taking each day as it comes, sleeping a few minutes earlier, adding one piece of butter lettuce to the plate and waking up five minutes earlier day by day.
Would that make a difference? Maybe the idea shouldn’t be new year’s resolutions but new day resolutions and most importantly, that we forgive ourselves each day and start again to achieve the best version of ourselves.
