New Years Resolutions: One Month In

As we push deeper into the depths of February, coming ever closer to the fabled end of winter and bidding spring blossoms as bright as the flowers themselves will follow, for many, their New Years Resolutions are simply a thing of the past. Whilst some will still be going strong, others’ promises have fallen out of possibility. Whilst some push ahead to day forty or fifty of their new selves, for others, their resolutions fell at the first hurdle or have faded into obscurity as the hustle and bustle of daily life consumes their waking lives.

New Years Resolutions are, inherently, set up to fail. Praying on the faux hopefulness of New Years, buried amongst the peer pressure of the occasion and empty bottles of some foul-tasting liquid that promises an alcoholic relief from the year just passed, the promises that we make to ourselves seventeen minutes into our next journey around the sun are supposed to mark a new dawn. They promise a prophesised version of ourselves that we inherently believe are significantly better than the self we ‘leave behind’ in the year just passed; the beginning of a new chapter as the old one closes.

For some, a New Years Resolution can be a springboard to make the year ahead ‘better’. But for others, they serve as a marker of insufficiency, and their likely failure further proof that they aren’t what they could be. That they aren’t enough.

So, for everyone who has failed or discarded their New Years Resolutions already, lets shift the narrative.

A New Years Resolution is a social construct; nowhere in the laws of science, nature, or the universe itself does it say that a New Years Resolution has to even exist in the first place. So if you find yourself under pressure from you or those around you to come up with, make and stick to a New Years Resolution, you’re always going to struggle to maintain it, and will make yourself feel even worse for it when it collapses. So don’t feel under pressure to engage in it in the first place if you don’t want to.

‘But why are you saying all this now, in February? Surely this is an article for mid-December’.

Not only is a New Years Resolution a social construct, it’s also a social construct within a social construct. For many, a slip up, a mistake, a moment of weakness, and their New Years Resolution is down and out, until it can re-emerge on December 31^st to try again next year. But ask yourself this; why wait until New Year? If you have set yourself a target this year, and it isn’t maintained for a day or two, who says you can’t restart immediately? Sure, New Years is a great time to put a resolution into action, but why not a New Months Resolution? Or a New Weeks Resolution? Or even a New Days Resolution?

Finally, many New Years Resolutions fail because they fall out of our priorities list. In a busy day of juggling work, school, family, life commitments, and building in enough rest to make it all possible, it’s not easy to set aside hours a week to take up reading, go the gym five days out of seven, or volunteer every week, no matter how much we may want to. And in an ever-changing world, what may have been important to us at the start of the year is no longer relevant a month or two into the future.

New Years Resolutions can be a fantastic motivator, but if you’ve already fallen behind on yours, they can be an invisible burden standing between you and the person you think you want to be. My advice is very simple; keep going. So what if you haven’t made it a full month already? So what if making it to the end of the week would be the first week you’ve made it happen? If your New Years Resolution is something you want to do, something that will give you a sense of achievement, fulfilment, or even just put a smile on your face, then go for it! Your New Years/Months/Days Resolution begins when you say it does and lasts as long as you say it does.

No matter what the first month of 2026 has had in store, no matter what challenges you face going forward, whether or not you stick to your New Years Resolution(s) is not indicative of your success this year. Whether or not one arbitrary goal has been reached is not the benchmark of satisfaction, achievement or success. As someone who hasn’t set New Years Resolutions for years, if you’re getting up every day, functioning, surviving, and moving forward, no matter the pace, you’re doing it right. 

Written by, Sophie Layton