Why New Year resolutions don’t work & what to do instead

January 2025 was the first in my life when I didn’t sit down and write an arm-length list of New Year resolutions. Funnily enough, 2025 was the first year when I actually accomplished all those resolutions I meant to write, but I didn’t. To name a few:

• get back in shape & be able to climb a mountain again

• lose weight so all my beautiful, hand made & expensive clothes could fit again (I had gained cca 10kg since opening the coffee shop, mainly since I was stress eating cakes and pastries, drinking buckets of coffee and matcha lattes drenched in syrup & had 1 to no meals/day…)

• travel more

• read more

• get better at photography

• set stronger boundaries with people who drain me

• walk 10k steps/day

How generic and ‘out there’ these are, right? Take “lose x much weight” - WHY WAS THAT ALWAYS A GOAL, EVERY YEAR, EVEN WHEN I WAS SKINNY?

It was after reading ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear, along with episode 264 about goal setting on 'The psychology of your twenties’ podcast that I understood that there’s a better way to set goals that even my ADHD brain could follow through for a whole year, rather than abandon in the 1st week of January.

I’m not going to get all technical here and explain the psychological concepts - Jema does an amazing job at describing the core ideas of the book + giving some invaluable advice, so I suggest you give that episode a listen.

I’ll go straight to examples.

…but first, a photo of yours truly, 10kg lighter, in Iceland (3 resolutions achieved here: got fit & strong, lost weight, travelled)

Somewhere above the Pakgill camp site - I swear I wasn’t completely out of breath after this hike!

It all started with a mindset shift: I wasn’t going to live a year of checking things off a list.

I was going to embody every single one of those resolutions, and become that person I aspired to be, right away.

You might think I was delusional, but I promise you, it will all make sense.

I did 2 things.

1. I did that Pinterest girlie activity of sitting down with a pen and paper, and started imagining that version of myself that I thought I was never going to become: confident, energic, happy, well-groomed, smiling as she climbed a mountain or as she took photos of beautiful things, or as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. You know - the opposite of what I felt I was in those moments: sad, depressed, overweight, out of breath after climbing the stairs (whilst carrying a snack from the kitchen) and with the self esteem of an introverted sewer rat.

   I thought about that young woman and tried my best to imagine what a day in her life looked like. I asked myself: what brings her so much joy that she’s not depressed all the time? How can she get through a day without succumbing to downspirals and self pity parties? How did she keep her figure, so she could wear all those pretty dresses overflowing in my wardrobe, untouched? When did she find all that time to read, and create beautiful still life scenes and take photos and paint and laugh and be everything I wasn’t?

   I wrote ‘a day in the life’ lists and ‘becoming her’ checklists in the past, and they remained untouched, year after year.

   This time, I tried to find out what she was like, not just what she was doing. What gave her the strength and motivation to do all those things I wanted to, but never could, as much as I tried? Who was she? The answers helped me do the 2nd thing:

2. I wrote a list of affirmations. I told myself I was that woman, and I had that lifestyle, and I was living the way that she did.

   Call it lying to myself, projecting, what not, IT WORKED. I told myself there was nothing stopping me from becoming that version of myself, and I gave myself permission to start acting like her. I defined a few affirmations, wrote them down, and started living each day with the mindset that I was the person I envisioned. I was her.

Here’s how that looked like, in practice, compared to the ‘classical way’ of writing New Year resolutions:

“I want to get fit/lose weight/walk 10k steps each day” became: “I am someone who values physical health”. I chose this example because this particular affirmation led to a huge transformation in my life, on so so many levels, it feels unreal, looking back at where I was a year ago!.

I went further, and expanded on that affirmation:

I am someone who takes care of her body, nourishes it with healthy food, moves intentionally and prioritises rest.

I am someone who likes to spend time in nature, and who finds value and inspiration during long walks.

Suddenly, it was no longer a conversation about scales, it was a mindset shift about the person I saw myself as. I chose to see myself differently, and through those affirmations I gave myself the road map to becoming that version of myself.

Let’s take a look at the impact just this one line had on my life: I am someone who likes to spend time in nature, and who finds value and inspiration during long walks.

I started going on long (1h) walks in the morning, from that very day. I have 3 dogs, and walking all 3 of them was an excruciating task I reserved for evenings with my husband. However, I felt guilty to be out and about, walking, whilst they stayed home, so I took them with me, at least when the weather wasn’t too bad for them. This meant increased exercise for them, and extra time spent together. Hauling 3 dogs on separate leashes, with all the other dog walkers and cyclists and children coming our way and freaking the dogs out has always been the worst part of my day…

So after finding the cycle path and walking the same route daily, their behaviour and recall improved during walks, and after a few weeks I started to look forward to these walks to the point where I’d grow impatient waiting for the sun to rise so we could all go out!

All the new, long walks led to them losing those extra kgs the vet kept telling me about.

…and because they were more tired, they spent more time sleeping throughout the day and less time pacing around the house or coming to my desk and whining for attention whilst I tried to focus on work.

…and that led to longer periods of uninterrupted work, which led to increased focus and productivity on my part.

I managed to get ‘in the zone’ more often, and didn’t find myself distracted as frequently. This led to picking up my phone less frequently, and getting lost in doom scrolling stopped becoming a daily (let’s be honest, an hourly occurrence). Staying focused for hours on end led to a massive decrease in binge eating and fewer coffee breaks. Less caffeine = less anxiety throughout the day, and better sleep at night.

One of my favourite photo experiments, inspired by this branch I found during a dog walk

Some days I’d be back after a 1h walk with the dogs, I’d grab my headphones and go for another walk, alone, and listen to a podcast or an audiobook. I’ve listened to 60h of podcasts, according to Spotify Wrapped, and several audio books. I’ve also talked to my grandma for hours on end. She’s lonely, after grandpa’s passing in 2023, and talking to her has been one of my favourite things to do on walks.

I have lost weight - over 10kg to be precise. I did exercise more and paid more attention to my food, but a sedentary lifestyle AND constant binge eating paired with poor sleep have been mostly the cause of my weight gain… so tackling these made losing weight - and keeping it off for the other half of the year - possible. I’m now at the same weight I was after an exercise & ‘dieting’ program I’ve finished in May. I don’t work out more than twice/week BUT I walk. A lot.

I can go on: Increased absorption of vitamin D, since I don’t spend all day indoors anymore. Improved mood. Returning from a long walk in horrible weather makes me feel strong and capable of tackling difficult things.

I can fit into every single one of the dresses I have carefully curated and invested on in the past 5 years, and I feel much calmer, more relaxed and daresay-happy. 2025 was the first year in a decade or so when I didn’t ‘identify as a depressed person’.

All of this, because I saw myself as an outdoorsy person who liked to go on walks, and started changing my life, one morning at a time.

There is so much more I could say about the power of creating affirmations about oneself, but this is already a long article and I’m not sure anyone is really that interested. Still, I felt urged to share this, on a dark, cold and rainy January morning, when oh so many people are stepping inside a gym for the very first time…

If you found any inspiration or value here, or want to read more, kindly let me know in the comments! Would love to connect!

Lots of love,

Carmina