“3…2…1… Happy New Year!”
The clock strikes midnight and a new year has arrived! You wait in that moment for the air to
feel different, for you to feel a little bit older and wiser, for the turning of a new page.
Days ago, you sat down and meticulously journaled about the version of yourself you want to bethis coming year. You detailed all the things you want to leave behind and all the things you
want to be going forward. You want to reinvent yourself and here is a new chapter to do it in.
The siren call of reinvention is hard to resist. It tells us that with a stroke of midnight, we can
shed everything heavy, everything that hurts, and transform into something new. Here it is, a
chance like no other to start fresh.
The New Year offers a great opportunity to reflect. We begin to wonder how this new set of
seasons will change us and what surprises this year might bring. We also want to take mattersinto our own hands, and transform ourselves before anything else gets a chance to. It’s wonderful that we chose a day in the dead of winter to grow something new.
So why is it that by the time January is two weeks older, we’re disappointed?
The truth is that reinvention is harder than we hope. We see the difficulty immediately when we wake up on January 1st with a hangover that scolds us for the excessive drinking last night, with the unfolded laundry of 2025, with the same patterns that we wished away. We feel a pang of guilt because we’re already behind on our Dry January resolutions, the chores we have to finish, the emails sent two days ago that we haven’t replied to. The deadlines that were pushed to the new year are suddenly here and now we’re wondering why we ever thought this year could be different.
While you’re blaming yourself for ruining your “fresh start”, you forget that last year, you read
more books that summer than you ever have, you started brushing your teeth every night after a dentist appointment in March, you finally started therapy in September. You’re a different person this new year than you were last.
There are so many barriers to change that we tend to forget in the excitement of becoming
something new. We forget that change is ultimately scary, and our brains often prefer the
comfort of our old patterns, whether they serve us or not. Building new patterns can be a
monumental task that takes all our mental and emotional energy. Truthfully, our brains aren’t
capable of recognizing that the world decided today is a blank slate. They know that we went to bed and woke up to another new day, like we always do.
Instead of expecting yourself to sprout wings on the first day of the year, reflect instead on what you hope for. What are the changes you’re already working hard at that you want to find ease in? What are you holding inside that you want to release? When does it feel right to start building the habits that improve your quality of life? What feels doable, manageable, and honors your capacity?
On January 1st, you wake up as yourself. You make coffee with the same beans you bought a
few weeks ago. It tastes like comfort, routine, and safety and you reflect that you hated coffee before college. You make plans to meet the same friends you’ve had for years, who were once strangers when you first moved to your apartment. You cook a familiar recipe for lunch that you once had to double-check each step for. You recognize that each day isn’t a countdown to the next, but rather a platform to rest on and stay awhile.
