New Year, Better Me: How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

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The ball is rolling – it’s officially 2026. It’s that time of the year where we’re all asking: ‘How are the New Year resolutions going?’. I know many people who would answer ‘badly’ – even more who would admit sheepishly that they don’t have any resolutions (and that’s okay, even I’ve had my moment where my one goal was purely to make it through the year). But for those who have, and especially for those who are already thinking of throwing the towel in, this is my attempt to help you keep your New Year’s resolutions.

Successfully keeping your resolutions starts before you have even made them. I think many people are too harsh on themselves and, while a new year is a new start, it doesn’t have to be a new you. While discussing resolutions before Christmas, the daunting pressure to either succeed with flying colours or to not try at all, my flatmate and I came up with a new slogan, one that is a little more forgiving than what is usually thrown about in the early stages of January: ‘New Year, Better Me’. The point is that New Year resolutions are not meant for you to eradicate your bad habits and become a different person (especially not in the mere hours between December 31st and January 1st), but rather to improve. Slow steps are key. I hate to sound like a pessimist and call it more realistic, but we must be kinder to ourselves – there is no need for a new you, better is fine.

Keep this in mind when choosing your resolutions. It is maybe the most important point that I will make in this article: the phrasing is imperative. Instead of ‘I will go on a run twice a week’, and by the third week of January, you hit a bump, lose track of time, and accidentally find yourself on Sunday evening having only gone on one run, rephrase your resolution to ‘I will go on 104 runs this year’. That’s still the same number of runs, but now it’s a marathon, not a sprint. When – not if – you do keep up with your resolution, then by June, the idea of going on multiple runs a week will be a lot simpler than it was on January 10th, when your motivation seems to be fading and you’re stuck under a mountain of work. Give yourself a break. Realistically, you’re going to be sporadic at the start, and if you find yourself in November a little shy of your goal and you’re still eager to complete it, then you can push yourself to catch up. You’ll begin to appreciate how long a year really is: it’s forgiving, and ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ are a natural part of the process.

Which leads me to my third point: make sure your goals are year long. Things that you can build on throughout the next twelve months. See next January not as a time to ‘restart’ but to continue, to build upon what you have achieved this year. Making my resolutions vague, like ‘go to the gym more’, means I get to look back on the cusp of the year, and ask myself, ‘did I go to the gym more?’. It doesn’t matter if I only really started going in May. The point is: it’s open-ended, it’s relative, it’s your resolution. The whole goal is to be better, even if it’s only by a little bit.

So, with that last message: go, make your resolutions. Change them if you’d like – it’s not too late. But be kind to yourself, small steps are more significant than you give them credit for – and it’s the little things that count.