Another year has passed. Beyond the emotional exhaustion of December, we now face the ambush of a new year and the overwhelming pressure to change.
Clear away the remnants of last year and plaster over it with the new; new habits, new diets, new routines, new you. The whole world seems to be shedding its skin, redressing itself with increasingly ambitious methods of reinvention.
I’ve often found myself falling into step with this juggernaut of rejuvenation. Each new year has brought strict rules that I have imposed on myself, becoming harsher and harsher after the failures of the year before. This year, however, I have decided to see things in a different light.
The Time for Change
Time moves. It grows and bends, everchanging and constantly building upon itself. Time doesn’t recognise separate years in itself – it hasn’t chopped itself up and imposed meaning onto a single chunk; it just goes on.
For as long as we have set ourselves tasks bound by time limits, time itself has carried on regardless of those boundaries, in the same way it always has. Perhaps we should try to do the same.
There is no reason for us to enforce goals at the start of the year and feel disheartened when we haven’t achieved them by the end. Our goals can be fluid, bleeding through from one year into the next. Growth can happen at any time, not merely within 12-month intervals.
On top of this, the beginning of a new year is a tiring time. With January comes the cold – snow, wind, rain, days that end early and begin late and darkness that feels all encompassing.
While other animals hibernate, we feel the need to work harder than ever – returning to routines and rigorous schedules, with the pressure of a new year’s resolution looming over us, all while our minds and bodies are asking us for rest. It is much more fair to our mental health to treat the start of a new year as a time of recovery, easing ourselves gradually into a rhythm, rather than a time of rapid productivity.
The skin of last year doesn’t need to be shed. Across your lifetime you have shaped yourself slowly into the person that you are today. That growth does not need to be replaced within a year.
Instead, you can allow yourself the time to build upon what you already have, not through radical change, but through small, compassionate goals. These achievements may take a year – they may take less, or more, but this indicates neither success nor failure. You are simply a person who, like time, will move, grow and bend, everchanging and building upon yourself.
Conclusion
Therefore, I have decided not to live by new year’s resolutions. The beginning of each new year is a time for rest and grace. Goals mustn’t be tied down to a year at a time – we may reach these deadlines, we may not, or our goals may change entirely. This is not a failure, this is growth in our most natural, healthy way.
If the start of a new year comes with feelings of pressure, overwhelm or self-criticism, this does not mean that you are doing anything wrong. It may simply mean that this pressure of total reinvention is not entirely realistic, and that such expectations can feel too severe. Therapy can offer you the space to explore these feelings at your own pace and create more attainable, compassionate goals that aren’t fuelled by the pressure of creating a new “you”.
