Want to know why so few of those New Year’s resolutions we make ever really work?
Simple. It's because we make them while we're panicking, while our world's in a state of chaos. We're trying to make plans for an an entire year at a time when we barely know what day of the week it is.
IT’S the second of January. We’ve eaten way too much, we’ve drunk way too much, we’ve spent way, way too much.
We feel bloated, we feel hungover, we feel guilty. Nothing about life’s normal, all our boundaries and schedules and disciplines have long since been binned with the last scrapings of Christmas turkey.
So let’s ask ourselves: Who in their right mind would decide this was the best time to make major, life-changing decisions?
Ten bonus points to whoever called out: NO ONE!
Because round about the second of January, few of us are in our right minds; that is to say, we’ve abandoned all the processes we use to make our lives go as smoothly as possible for the rest of the year.
Then, the minute the Bells stop clanging, we hear ourselves barking: “Right – that’s it! No more carbs, no more ciggies, no more wine. This is the year when I get serious about myself and my body!”
At which point – the 11th of January at time of writing – I really do have to ask: How’s that working out for you?
Chances are, the answer is that it’s not working out all that well. Well, there was still a fair bit of food in the fridge, loads of leftover chocolates, shame to waste them really. And the gym’s a nightmare this time of year with all those halfwits charging in full of New Year’s Resolutions.
I’ll start next week. Yeah, def. Week after that, absolute latest. Although we’ll be skint then, eh? So maybe wait till the next pay comes in; then we’ll be proper serious about sorting ourselves out.
That’s what happens when we make rash, panic-driven, chaos-ridden promises to ourselves that, deep down, we know we’ll never keep.
And that’s why now, well into the second week of the year, is a far healthier time to start thinking about what we want to change about ourselves in 2024.
The festive season’s gone. The pressure’s off to enjoy ourselves or else. We’re back at work, back on a normal sleep pattern, back in a routine. Which means our mind is far better equipped to deal with change.
Note the word ‘change’ rather than ‘resolution’.
A resolution is rarely going to stick. The very phrase “New Year’s Resolution” has long since become associated with a highly-sceptical attitude not only from those we brag about them to, but – if we’re honest – from ourselves as well.
“Happy New Year! I’m going to lose three stones in 2024!”
“Sure you are. Good luck with that…”
“Aye, you’re right, who am I kidding? Pass the tiramisu…”
That’s where making decisions in times of chaos gets us. Whereas if we allow ourselves time to get our lives back to normal before making actual, lasting changes, we’re far more likely to come up with a plan that we can stick to, something that’s both realistic and effective.
For instance, instead of blurting out that we’re NEVER having carbs again and NEVER touching another drop of wine, how about we take bread, potatoes and pasta out of our diet for three weeks and have a glass of something nice twice a week rather than every night?
Simply by making this temporary tweak to our diet, we’re starting to turn our metabolism around. We’re making our bodies feel better. If we add in ten, 15 minutes of exercise, four days a week – you know, rather than booking every gym class going then cancelling most of them because we’re knackered – we’ll really be moving in the right direction.
That’s how genuine change begins to work. We look at where we are, where we want to be and what tools we have to get us there and then we step into it.
Doesn’t matter if we’re looking at our weight, our finances, our relationships, our physical fitness or our mental health. Change to any or all of them has to be manageable, it has to work within our schedules, our boundaries, our abilities, because once we start setting unrealistic goals, we can very quickly lose our enthusiasm for the project, which turns it into a chore.
And nobody enjoys doing chores.
Change is about breaking patterns. In my case, eating rubbish – biscuits and sweets, mostly – gives me a momentary whoosh of comfort followed by an extended slump of unhappiness. But if I barred myself from ever, ever having another Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer or bag of sherbet lemons, my willpower would crack after about ten minutes.
Why is this? Because it’s not the biscuits and sweets we’re looking for, it’s just the comfort. Reaction for something nice but unhealthy is a reaction we’ve programmed ourselves to make; put the kettle on, grab a handful of goodies while it boils, then another to go with the coffee.
When I’m into this pattern, I buy little punnets of cherry tomatoes, stick them in a bowl with some cubes of cheese and reach in there instead. Same reaction, same arm movement, but a healthier intake.
It’s the same principle whatever the negative habit we’re trying to break; don’t beat ourselves up over what we’re doing, ask ourselves why we’re doing it and move forward from there.
Am I spending too much on impulse online buys because I need the stuff? Or because I’m bored, because something else in my life’s making me unhappy?
Am I glued to my phone at night rather than talking to my partner because social media is endlessly entertaining? Or is because I’m scared of missing out on something that never actually happens?
These are the questions our mind finds space to compute once we give ourselves time to think. The answers we find in this atmosphere of calm will bring us closer to making positive, lasting changes.
Trust me, you can make those changes happen. Starting right now.
There’s a lyric by the band Faithless that cuts right to the chase of our mental health.
It goes: “If you place a thing at the centre of your life that lacks the power to nourish, it will eventually poison and destroy you; as simple a thing as an idea or your perspective on yourself or the world. No one can be the source of your content, it lies within, in the centre. " So many of us have that ‘thing’ messing with our heads.
So many of us have that ‘thing’ messing with our heads.
It can be a bad memory that haunts us, a trauma that changed the way we see the world – but usually, it’s just a story we tell ourselves that we struggle to let go of.
I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I don’t deserve love, happiness, a better job.
It’s just the way I am.
That song, Liontamer, gets it bang on. The longer we hang on to these stories, the more they can poison us, even destroy us.
That’s what my new book, The Reason Everything Happens, wants us to fight against. It encourages us to questions our internal stories, to revisit bad memories and traumas and see them for what they all are: Nothing more than thoughts.
Strip away all the bull***t and that’s all any of these poisonous things are; thoughts, not facts.
Politics, religion, the class system, football rivalries, so many external influences which we’re told divide us, yet none of them are real, just one person’s thoughts pitted against another’s.
The teacher who told us we’d never amount to anything wasn’t telling the truth, just projecting their own prejudice. The parent who gave in to the belief that we had to know our place was only repeating the story their parents passed down.
In The Reason Everything Happens, I invite us to question these thoughts with two little words:
WHO SAYS?
Who says we’re not good enough? Who says we don’t deserve the things we yearn for? Who says how we vote or pray or which team we support has to divide us?
From experience, both personal and from working with others on their mental health, these stories don’t often stand up to much scrutiny from these two little words. And deep down, I think most of us know they won’t.
We’re maybe just a little bit scared to say them.
As the song says, though, the truth lies within us. Until we accept and embrace that truth about ourselves, it’s so much more difficult for us to understand the world around us. And until we’re able to understand the world around us, it’s so much more difficult to become the person we’re capable of being.
When I coach stronger mental health, which I’ve been doing for the past three years after a lot of DIY work on my own mind, I don’t promise answers. My job is to lead you towards your own answers, because only you know what those answers are – and often, we DO know, we either just don’t know we know or don’t want to admit it.
In the same way, this book doesn’t have all the answers, but it pokes us to ask the questions that lead towards them. It questions the difference between social media’s idea of what happiness looks like and what it actually is. It questions the current fads of self-labelling – yes, including labelling ourselves with mental health issues – of being triggered and of feigning offence.
It looks at practical ways of quietening our minds when we feel overwhelmed, it urges us to only try and control what’s controllable, it reminds us that we don’t always need a docto or a therapist to make us feel better.
It even tells us very bluntly at one point not to be a dick.
So, why is it called what it’s called? Simply because of my belief that rather than us being at the mercy of some huge, universal plan, The Reason Everything Happens is that we make it happen through everything we say and do and believe.
It’s up to us to take responsibility for these words and actions, which means working to let go of the past, of bad memories, of traumas, of our stories.
Or, to quote the recently-departed actor Matthew Perry, it’s about realising that:
“I am enough, I was always enough.
I was just the only one who couldn’t see it”.
Let’s start realising the same about ourselves.
Not tomorrow, but today. Right now.