Why I'm not setting any New Year's resolutions this year

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First of all, if you're new here, my name is Sophie. I’m on a journey to slow down, reconnect with nature, and live more intentionally. After moving off-grid, I’m sharing lessons on rewilding, simplicity, and finding balance in a busy world, without any of the fluff.

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Every December and January my inbox starts filling up with invites to “goal-setting workshops” and countless emails with handy tips to “finally achieve those goals.” New Year, New Me. And every single time, the same thing happens: I write down my goals in a newly purchased journal just for this occasion and I vow things will be different this year. Each year, I scribble down that ambitious list of things I will surely achieve, and each year, I set the bar too high. Each year I don’t achieve any of those things, precisely because I had set the bar too high.

2024 started in much the same way, but somewhere midway through the year I started to realise something. I realised that this ridiculous way of hinging all my efforts on a change of date would never be the way. There’s nothing inherently magical about January 1st. There’s also nothing magical about “Monday” or the “first day of next month”. My bad habits never magically disappear and I never find myself suddenly overflowing with everlasting motivation. Newsflash: future me has the exact same amount of motivation and willpower as current me.

The thing is: I was never going to be a better version of myself on the 1st of January. Life doesn’t change overnight, just because the date on the calendar changed.

I wrote about similar realisations before. For example, I had to move 20,000 km away and then move to an off-the-grid cabin to realise that changing locations doesn’t change how you think and feel. Similarly, changing the date also doesn’t change how you think and feel - who would have thought?

Here’s what I’ve realised in 2024: improving your life doesn’t happen overnight, it happens slowly, through little changes every day. It happens when you’re not really paying any attention, but you’re just putting one foot in front of the other, when you’re just doing the thing. It happens not on January 1st but in May and June and those other months no one ever writes about. It happens because you have made a decision and a commitment for yourself that you’re not going to get caught up anymore in what a space, a calendar or society dictates.

It happens because you decide it will happen.

Living off the grid has taught me so much about time and nature. Nature doesn’t care about the calendar. Trees shed their leaves when they’re ready, not because it’s the 1st of March (or September if you’re in a different hemisphere). The seasons turn quietly and patiently. The days get a little warmer, the birds start returning, the sun is up a little longer, and tiny leaves start forming on the trees, and all of a sudden, you realise it’s not so cold anymore, and winter is finally over. It happens without you really noticing, but it happens. And all of a sudden there will be a day when you fully realise that everything around you has changed.

And really, nature doesn’t care about your goals and resolutions. If you want this year to be the year you finally go outdoors and start walking again, go do it. Don’t shout it off the Instagram rooftops. Just get outside and start walking. Do 5 steps, do 100 steps, do 10,000 steps; nature doesn’t care - she’ll still be there, might as well go and enjoy it. And one day, maybe in April or August you will realise you’ve been walking, you’ve been outdoors more. And it will have happened, because you have started and you stuck with it.

Anyway, this year, I’m not resolving to do anything grand or extraordinary. I’m not resolving to do anything. I’m not even committing to not making commitments. Maybe halfway through the year or the month I'll decide I do want to make a resolution, and that'll be perfectly fine too.

What I will do, is listen and pay attention to nature, to the birds and trees and flowers all around me. I’m committing to something quieter: paying attention. This year I will be paying attention to the rhythm of the seasons, to the birds who visit my little patch of wilderness every day and to all the subtle ways I’m growing and changing every day. Oh, I guess I just made a resolution, oops.

But hey, maybe that’s the real resolution we all need: not to change everything all at once, but to trust that by taking little steps and by paying attention the change will happen.

Something that inspired me this week:

I really liked this post from a while back from

Grant Snider

about the importance of giving thanks. We don’t practice enough gratitude. And by ‘we’, I mean ‘me’, I don’t do it enough. It’s a good reminder to be grateful for the things and people around us who make everyday life possible. The post also reminded me of the book by

A.J. Jacobs

Thanks a Thousand, where he goes on a journey to thank everyone who was involved in making his cup of coffee. A great read!

And this is also a good opportunity to say thank you to all my subscribers - I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for all you lovely people reading and liking my articles. Thank you 😊

Image by Grant Snider from this post

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