Take it from me as a life coach: ditch your new year’s resolutions

I don’t know about you, but when I hear anyone utter anything about new year’s resolutions, I sigh. Sometimes internally, often externally. It’s not because I don’t want people to have goals and better themselves in the new year, it’s just that, well, there’s a lot of evidence that resolutions don’t work. Never being one for small talk, I feel like resolutions without a plan are a bit of a waste of time and energy… but you can’t say that to people who don’t get it, can you?

As a business coach and mentor who works with businesses and individuals around achieving their goals and developing themselves, I don’t want to be “that person” who launches into a lecture whenever there’s an opportunity, or tells people why their vague resolution is unlikely to succeed, but it’s the truth. As one of my objectives for this year is to help people understand more about how they can achieve their goals (actually, I’ve written a whole book, You’ve Got This, about this), this seems like a good place to start.

One of the main issues is the structure of a resolution. You want to eat less chocolate, lose more weight, get fitter, get a new job, spend less time on your phone – these are wishy-washy statements. What does less mean? Are we talking about putting one of the Heroes back in the tub or a total ban? If we want to shed some weight, how much are we talking? A pound or a stone? You get the idea. Applying the fundamentals of goal setting to resolutions doesn’t just make them clearer, they also become more achievable.

Let’s take the getting fitter example. What does it actually mean? Do you want to be able to run a marathon or climb the stairs without getting out of breath? To borrow from the business world, there’s a well-known acronym associated with goal setting called Smart. Being specific is key, and being measurable is too, because how will you know when you get there, or even if you’re on the right path if you don’t know where you want to end up? The other bit I like is timebound. Nothing motivates people more than a deadline, so knowing you want to do X by Y means you have a deadline.

Being strategic about resolutions has another benefit too. If you lose weight and you know how much you want to lose by whatever date, an off day when everything was far too tempting (or life far too annoying and chocolate was needed) doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel and declare yourself a failure. When we have hazy goals we also have hazy guidelines and a non-existent plan that seems to act as a great excuse to beat ourselves up at every opportunity.

I’m not saying stop wanting to be better – I’m saying the opposite. Take your resolutions seriously or just don’t bother at all. January is a long, old month. It’s dark and miserable, and the credit card bills come rolling in, so there will be times when your best intentions fall by the wayside – and that’s OK, that’s what being human is all about. But if you just sack off resolutions altogether, and change them to goals, it becomes so much better…

The other option is to tell those nosy people that you’re perfect as you are, that new year’s resolutions are against your core beliefs, or that it’s none of their business. That works too, but be prepared for the looks, they’re probably similar to the ones I get when I start sighing.

You’ve Got This: How to supercharge your business and conquer your goals by Rhea Freeman is published by Bloomsbury Business on 16 January 2025 (£16.99)