by Rebeca Moss
I’ve done it. Finally. After thirty years, I am transformed. I’ve become the woman I was destined to be.
Every morning I wake up refreshed. I jump out of bed at 6am and within ten minutes I’m ready for the day (having carefully laid out my clothes the night before). After reading three chapters of a stimulating non-fic and journaling about my goals, I drink a litre of lemon water and graze on my perfectly tender overnight oats.
At work, I’m entirely focused (having given up social media) and with this major boost in productivity, I’m done by lunchtime. This leaves me plenty of time to exercise in the daylight – all that natural vitamin D is doing wonders for my complexion. Then it’s time for some culture – I usually head to a museum or an art exhibition – before finishing the day with a nutritious meal which my wife and I eat at the kitchen table while discussing the day’s events. We’re asleep by 10pm – those eight hours of sleep don’t happen by chance.
Except I haven’t really done it, have I? I’ve snoozed my alarm three times, scrolled the length of Instagram and scraped my knotted hair into a ponytail. After twenty minutes routing around for a pair of tights, I shovel soggy cold oats into my mouth, followed by acrid lemon water. I have zero time for reading or journaling as, somehow, I’m running late for work, despite a ten second commute from kitchen to desk. I spend an hour and a half responding to emails, and much longer working on an article I can’t seem to get quite right. I finish late, and, while I do manage to prepare the nutritious meal, my wife and I eat in front of the TV, plates in laps, before dragging ourselves up to bed an hour later than planned.
All my experiments with ‘new year, new me’ resolutions have been comprehensive failures. And I can’t imagine they’ve been particularly good for my psyche, either. What does demanding a total rehaul of yourself once every 365 days do to your self-esteem? When you fail to miraculously conjure a new personality on the 1st of January, and you’re left with the same old you, how damaging is that disappointment?
This time, I tried something different. With a fat felt tip pen, I drew a line through the centre of a torn out page. Two categories:
Things to bring with me in 2024
Things to leave behind in 2023
On the left hand side, I noted some of the things I actually quite like about myself. To my surprise, the column quickly filled with habits I’d formed, skills I’d gained and traits I was proud of.
On the right, I jotted down some limiting beliefs and behaviours that I was happy to shed with the changing of the year.
And that was it – no unnaturally early starts, no new exercise regime, and certainly no overnight oats. In fact, nothing new at all. Just the same old me, with minor tweaks.
It’s early days. We’re only 10 days into 2024. But I do think this is one non-resolution resolution I can stick to. I might not have become the woman I was destined to be when the clock struck midnight, but at least this one feels a bit better about herself than she usually would at this time of year.