A new year and a fresh start

Our relationships expert, Sarah Abell, offers her advice on making the right New Year's Resolutions.

Lose two stone and the wobbly bit around my middle. Get fit and maybe even run a marathon (how you would laugh at that one if you knew me better). Learn to speak Spanish. Save more or make more (preferably both). Spring-clean my cupboards, house, finances and… life in general. Be a better wife, mother, daughter, relative and friend. Re-write my will and review my pension. Put my photos in albums (not done since I was 19). Take up ironing, read better books, play more golf and visit art galleries. Be more organised (especially with my filing) and become a much more patient, kind, lovely and charitable person.

All of the above have appeared on my New Year’s resolution lists at some time or other. Some, I admit, appear year after year. Most are broken by day three and discarded by day seven.

I’m not the only one. Researchers reckon that fewer than a quarter of us will keep our resolutions, which makes me wonder why we bother? I believe it has something to do with the optimism of a fresh start. It is the chance to change, to improve and to become the best possible version of ourselves. Midnight on New Year’s Eve is like a line drawn in the sand: we leave behind any mistakes and failings from the past and we step into the future, with all its limitless potential.

It reminds me of being a child and the feeling that everything was possible on the first day of school after the summer holidays. I would open the pristine, blank exercise book, get out my new pen and resolve to make a real effort to do my best. The first few days, I would use my neatest handwriting, lay everything out beautifully and concentrate like mad so that I didn’t make any mistakes. By week two (if not before), the handwriting would slip and the usual corrections from my teacher would be scrawled across the page. Reality would kick in, old habits would return and I would promise myself it would be different next time.

Why do so many of us fail with our January resolutions… and some of us even before the Christmas decorations have come down? I believe that we put too much pressure on ourselves; we set goals only because we think we “should” or “ought to”; we aren’t specific enough about our objectives; we don’t plan to succeed; or we just feel too lazy, stressed, busy, tired, hungry, ill, upset, bored, or demotivated to make it happen today and then, by tomorrow, it’s too late – our desire has beaten our will, yet again.