‘New Year, New You’: a different perspective

As another year starts, and the streamers from the party the night before lie dormant on the floor, and the echoes of auld lang syne become a distant memory, attention inevitably seems to turn towards what the new year will bring.  This can be many things, but one of the many traditions that accompany the new year, is the notion of new year resolutions – a list of all the things that we want to change as the clock chimes midnight, or as the calendar turns over (old school, I know!) into a new year, a new chapter.

For some, it might be a tradition.  For others, it might be an incentive to make a change to something, to improve something.  For others, it might be goals that we want to achieve in the coming year.  It can act as a motivator, an incentive, a spark that ignites a flame of evolution and change.  Indeed, I, like many others, have goals for the year ahead, and areas or things that I would like to build on over the coming year, with the beginning of a new year being the spark that led to their creation.

However, for others, it can mean more than that.  The phrase ‘new year, new you’, can have many connotations.  It can be seen as a slogan, one that is catchy and trips off the tongue easily.  It can light up social media pages, be a tagline in magazine articles, be a catchy theme of a podcast (or a title of a blog post), but underneath it, is the message that as we embark on a new year, we also need to be a different version of ourselves; a newer, brighter, shinier, version.  The phrase, ‘out with the old, and in the with the new’, but in this instance, the ‘out’ is who we were in the year before midnight, and the ‘new’ being the version 2.2025 that will be brought in following the 12th chime of the clock.

But as I sitting writing this, on the 1st day of a new year, I would pose the question: ‘why does all of you need to change?’

To say that a new you is needed for the new year, implies that there was something wrong with the previous year’s one, and whilst this is a sweeping statement, and I may be saying it to a reader that I have never met and who could counter with ‘how do you know’, I would suggest that there were plenty of things that were positive, special, and unique about version 2024.  Yet the new year can bring an expectation that rather than focus on all that is beautiful about us, we identify all that we didn’t achieve, or that we are missing, and that we commit to making this happen over the next 12 months, with the belief that if we achieve them, a new and better version of us will appear.

For those who struggle with feelings of low self-worth, or acceptance and love for themselves, this can be a difficult process.  It can exacerbate feelings of not being enough, of not being good enough.  It can lead people to feel that they have failed if they do not achieve their resolutions, despite research largely indicating that 80% of resolutions have ended by mid-February, and in some instances, may serve to ‘confirm’ thoughts that they hold about themselves.  It can place expectations and standards, that lead to a feeling of pressure.  It can leave us striving to be a different person to who we truly are.  It can steer us away from our goal of reaching our true potential as our authentic self.

Being who you truly are matters.

Your authentic you is beautiful, special and unique.

There may be things that you would like to develop or evolve, and that is ok.  It is the growth and the experiences that arise from this that enrich us and all that is around us.  They provide nutrients to the soil in which we grow and reach the sunlight.

But in the same way that when moving a plant to new soil, the roots that have formed from the seed or bulb move from one spot to the other, so too does our authentic self when we move into each year.  The flower couldn’t bloom again without the root, and the same can be said for us.

So, as you move into 2025, love and cherish all that all you are and all that you have been and take who you are into the next year so that the flower that is you, can keep growing and blossoming.

You are truly beautiful - let yourself shine!