How to make resolutions you’ll actually keep

By Feargha DeCléir

FIRST YOU WILL NEED to decide what it is you want. This is famously difficult. Remember that basically, the entire world is contrived to convince us that we want what it wants us to want. The most common New Year's resolutions are probably ideas put in our heads by gyms, the diet and beauty industries, and hustle culture. Often, a list of resolutions is a guilt list, a list of things we think we ought to be doing. 

This year, I dare you to write a list of genuine desires. A list that is exciting to you. Maybe even a little outrageous. 

It is optional to write this list while slightly tipsy, or on a mocha-fuelled caffeine and sugar high. 

It is imperative that you write this list alone. 

NOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT, let's consider how you might get it. Make no mistake: any change we make to our lives, no matter how small, is an adjustment. So if your plans and dreams for 2024 are big, I urge you to be clever and gentle with how you implement them. In that vein, I have several strategies that have helped me to make resolutions that I actually keep, the first being:

THE TRADE-OFF. This was the first big game-changer for me. It’s always deceptively easy to forget that just because I write a whole lot of things down doesn’t mean that I will be physically capable of doing all of it. You may not have an endless supply of energy or time next year, and if you are telling yourself that you’ll make time for your new projects by giving up rest or sleep, I’m here to tell you, that is a bad idea. You’re going to cut down on rest? In January? A month we would be better off sleeping through altogether like our chipmunk friends?

You need to make trade-offs. For each thing you add, you must subtract. If you want to write a novel this year, you may have to allow your painting progress to fall by the wayside. If you want to get your health in order, you need to accept in advance the possibility that your grades will slip. If you want to stop people-pleasing, then you have to prepare yourself for a room full of tension that you do not break with a joke. 

This isn’t just about time management. 

It’s about knowing that we can’t do everything. 

So if your list of resolutions is a bid to finally be perfect, take a breath and start again. 

The moment I started to be able to implement positive change in my life was the moment I realised that I can’t be everything. Trying to be everything just made me feel like I wasn’t being anything. The value of sitting down in the new year and deciding what you want to focus on is in the act of making a choice. Of committing to one thing, and knowing that committing to one thing means taking your eye off another. At a certain point, I realised that I wasn’t failing at my resolutions year after year because I was lazy or undisciplined, but because they were impossible. I realised that it’s not a good idea to make a plan that assumes you’ll have more physical and mental resources than you have had up until this point. Instead, be clever. Give yourself permission to be average in one part of life so that you can flourish in another. 

The other benefit to this is that you don’t scare so easily. It’s easy to make a decision in January and keep it until February, you start to see it has consequences. It’s easy to panic and lose your resolve when you see that when you write all the time, you don’t paint, or that when you stop people-pleasing, people become… less pleased. If you accept the consequences in advance, nothing can stop you. 

So look at your list of resolutions. Write them down on the left-hand side of the page. And now, write another list on the right-hand side. This is your trade-off list. If you want to push yourself and improve yourself or your life with the left-hand side, the right-hand side is where you’re going to cut yourself some slack. And when you see them appear in your life - that bad grade, that grumpy dad - you’ll feel encouraged, not scared. And you’ll keep going. Which leads us to the next thing, which is that -

A YEAR IS AN AWFULLY LONG TIME. And a lifetime is even longer. This is a mistake I make way too often. I devise a new routine, a new habit, and then I tell myself I’ll do it for a full year, or that I’ll do it forever. That’s the goal, right? That’s what all the self-improvement men tell us to do. Build habits that will become so ingrained that they are second nature to us. Train ourselves like dogs to associate our alarm clock with an insatiable desire to drink celery juice and do two-hundred squats before dawn… 

I don’t think a lifetime is an achievable time frame, and I don’t think a year is either. For one thing, our priorities change too much within a year. Hell, we change too much within a year. How can I possibly decide in January what my focus should be on in July? Any number of things could have happened by then. So I’m going to tell you what a writing teacher told me: The ideal time to write the first draft of a novel is three months. In other words, a season.

She went on to explain that, to her, three months is as long as anything can stay in our heads. Any longer, and we change, our mood changes, our outlook on the world. But most of us can stay similar enough within three months - within a season - to tell one story, with one single feeling in it. 

I believe we can write our own story in those three months too - the story of our lives. And what is a New Year's resolution if not the desire to change our story?

So make a plan for the next three months, with an option to renew. 

In a general sort of way, what do you want? How do you think you could get there? What would you have to do each day? Good. Well, do it for three months, and then, in the early days of April, as winter is finally ending, pause and assess. 

Did your methods work? Do you even want the same thing anymore? Adjust, make a new three-month lease on your dreams, and move on. 

Trying to stay consistent for a whole year is extremely hard. If we do what we said we’d do for seven whole months but fail to do the whole year as we intended, we call ourselves a failure. But if we have a goalpost to reach every three months, we have the option of winning. And when we succeed, when we can say that we kept a promise to ourselves, we build trust. And trust builds courage. And who can stop us then?

IT IS OFTEN SAID that we cannot be what we cannot see. Hence, the arrival of the vision board. I have to admit it. I love vision boards. And what’s more, I think they work. For those not in the know, a vision board is a collage of photographs which represent the things you hope to achieve or embody. The idea is that the visual nature of the board makes it more clarifying than a list - being able to visualise things makes them more tangible, and may make the way forward more clear. When you put the vision board in some prominent place in your room and leave it there, the visuals are a constant reminder. As they seep into your subconscious, you will be alert and open to similar visuals. 

For example, if you want to gain the courage to become a drag performer, seeing that confident glamorous queen you dream of being on your wall each day will prepare you for the moment you see a poster on the wall advertising an opportunity to perform. Without that daily burst of vision, your brain might see the poster and tell you it’s not for you. But by reminding yourself what you want, and getting used to the idea of being the kind of person that does it, you are ready when the chance opens itself up to you.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to where to source your images. The easiest option is to go through magazines. You can even do this as a communal activity, sitting on your floor, tearing up magazines together and gluing them onto posters, comparing your dreams with your friends. This works because you are finding images that speak to you rather than searching for images of things you consciously thought up. In this sense, the vision board you make from an afternoon chopping up magazines may surprise you. 

For me, I prefer the more time-consuming but ultimately more specific technique of finding images online and then printing them all off. This has several benefits. Firstly, there may or may not be pictures in a magazine that represent what you feel or desire - but with this, you have practically every image in history at your disposal, so you can be as specific as you like.

There’s also a refining process that goes on. There are things you will write down, search on Pinterest, and find images that feel warm. Other images will feel less appealing. This helps you get more specific. If your goal is to prioritise rest and self-care this year, which images of rest attract you, and which do you feel ambivalent about? There is something about seeing something in an image that triggers an emotional response that can be much louder than a concept, floating in our heads. The visuals help you get inspired, but more importantly, they help you get specific. 

Finally, don’t worry about being too literal. Vision boards are visual, but life is subjective. Life is about how things feel. Your images don’t necessarily have to look how you hope your life will look, they should just look like how you want it to feel. To save an image of Jo March with her pages on the ground does not mean you intend to write by candlelight in period dress in an attic. It just means you want to feel how it felt for her.  

AND FINALLY - REMEMBER NOT TO FOCUS SOLELY ON THE NEW. ‘New Year, New Me’ implies that you cannot wait to be rid of the old you. But the old you is great, and you should want to hold on to some of her! You have done so much to be proud of this year, and you should write those down too - the things you loved, the things you know bring you joy because they’ve already brought you joy. It’s so ingrained in our culture to covet what we don’t have, and it’s easy to focus on that alone. But I like to anchor my vision board with photographs of mine that bring me joy. Memories that make my heart warm. Instead of just idealised Pinterest images, I remind myself of the magic already in my life. Instead of chasing something I might not recognise when I saw it, I chase what I have already seen glimpses of. I remember how warm I felt that night surrounded by friends, how safe I felt in that room long gone, I see a picture I took while doing my favourite hobbies, a selfie I took when I felt beautiful and unselfconscious and wild. Ultimately, my resolutions are a means to an end to feel more inspiration, to feel more love and to feel more joy. When I see these images, and recall these moments, I remember what it feels like to be me when I am in the throes of happiness. I remember to look for that happiness everywhere. In the things I plan to do this year, and in all of the wondrous things I’ll do when those plans inevitably fall apart.