Forget 'New Year, New You'. I like the Old You.

Yes, this message is late but in 2024 I am not rushing to keep up with what's relevant and the message still stands, there's a lot to learn from 2023 and it's never TOO late.

Hey friends,

I know this kind of title is the kind of thing you would see going live on New Year’s Day but I was on holiday and I’ve decided this year, I am not working on anyone else’s clock. I am not in a rush and I will release it 17 days into the year if I want to. For what it’s worth, I believe it’s just as valuable. In fact, it might even be more valuable and statistically, most people have already quit their resolution. Most people usually quit by 12th (last Friday), so much so that they have coined it Quitter’s Day so if you are feeling deflated, let me help.

Within this newsletter, I want to share:

• Why we should be using the new year to look back on the old you

• Why New Year’s is not the only time to set goals

• How you can succeed at your goals

• The questions I use in my yearly review to help me learn from 2023

• All my learnings and everything I’m taking away from 2023

• A peek at my actual yearly review to see what I’m working on this year

This is my current view from my desk. It reads ‘Your Success Is Inevitable’. I threw my vision board in the bin, as shown by all sun stains marking where things used to be and did what I do best, did things my way.

I am actually not against setting goals for the new year. January is stereotypically the time when we all have the most energy. Most of us have come back from a long break and Christmas is often the only time when everyone fully switches off and so goals can be a great way to put that energy to use. What I am against is:

• ONLY setting goals in the new year

• Shitting on our past self by wanting to abandon the you that did so much hard work last year with ‘new year, new you’

• Dismissing all the work, progress and success you have already achieved because you want more, more, more (this is called destination addiction)

• And then berating yourself because you have set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic and lofty goals.

How do you set yourself up for failure?

1. Most of the time people set the bar too high. They have unrealistic expectations about what is achievable and therefore they set themselves up for failure from the outset.

2. You can’t change overnight - no one can! Many self-help gurus unfortunately feed this message but the reality is that changing habits that have been engrained for years takes time, work and effort and you aren't going to get it right on the first try.

3. Your goals are too vague. Something like 'read more' means you don't know when you've achieved it and it also doesn't set a plan of how you are going to go about it. Instead something like 'read a chapter of a book every week' is more specific and you can feel the accomplishment and pride of having achieved it.

Goals aren’t a once a year occassion

Ok so if you don’t just set goals on new year’s, then when? I personally do it when the mood takes me but that’s because I am the kind of person where the mood does take me. If you are not and self-awareness is key, then make it more scheduled. Evaluate your goals at the start of every month. Do a Monday check in. Have quarterly goals instead of yearly goals. Do it your way but find a way that works for you. Me throwing the vision board in the bin was me finally accepting that it doesn’t work for me and instead, I opted for something quite basic. It’s very me though. I did what I do best: KISS (keep it simple stupid). What does work for me is to change my desktop background at the start of every year and to keep a really simple quote that makes me feel positive. Doing things differently in a new year doesn’t have to fit the format that everyone else tells you.

Let’s do things differently this year!

• Remove the pass/fail mentality. We are so all-or-nothing with goals that if we go to the gym two times, not three times a week, we throw the whole goal in the bin rather than recognising you went two more times than you would have. Praise any progress and improvement.

• Failure is feedback. When a day or a week goes wrong in terms of your new habits, ask yourself what stopped you from achieving the goal and what could you do differently the following day/week in order to help yourself

• Re-evaluate your goals regularly. Sometimes you set a goal that you thought you wanted but once you start doing it, you realise it is not having the impact you thought it would. Be flexible and let your ambitions shift and change. Last year I had goals for Substack numbers I wanted to hit, this year I don’t care.

• Liberate yourself from diet culture goals. Honestly, there is so many things more interesting than what you look like. This time of year we are so hard on our bodies and every diet company is there to capitalise on your insecurities when most of us are stereotypically at our heaviest. Be kind to your body this year. It is normal to gain weight over the holidays.

• Set yourself up for success. We already know breaking habits are hard so how could we make them as easy as possible? Maybe it's about putting a glass of water by your desk to encourage you to drink more water or a book by your bed so that you remember to read. 

2023 You Was Amazing!

Look, I just refuse to poo poo 2023 you! I just refuse to hear you disparaging or dismissing past you because they did their darndest. If you look back at 2023 and can’t think of a single accomplishment, then you are not trying hard enough. 2023 was a pretty shit for me overall and yet there were still gems (This Morning being a pretty massive one!). It’s a whole 365 days so I promise you there are things that you are going to have forgotten about unless you actually do the hard work to take out your calendar from last year whether it’s a physical one and online one and actually start at January and remember all that happened in one year. If you don’t keep a diary or a calendar, you can go through your camera roll.

I truly believe the more you focus on the negative, the more negative you will get and I’m just as guilty. I just called 2023 a shit year and in the same breathe said I was on This Morning which is way past my wildest dreams. In fact, my goal was just to be on TV, not the highest rated talk show and not nine times in nine and months. That’s huge and past me would have been so amazed because it’s been sat on my goals list since 2014!

Your Yearly Review

Let’s get into the meat of it. This changed I start the new year. I first did this in 2015 at the suggestion of my life coach Michelle Zelli and since I’ve been doing it for nine years now, over time, I have started to realise which questions resonate with me most and I like returning to the same questions every year so here they are:

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