A Year Without Resolutions
Enough, as it was
When reflection begins to feel like taking inventory at the end of the year, I resist the urge to overanalyse-to seek out prompts that would force a deconstruction or assign a verdict. My hesitation comes from knowing that this kind of reflection often involves measuring, judging, and categorising a period of time that gave me so much precisely because of what was absent.
It was everything that couldn’t be quantified that meant the most. The invisible learning-and especially the unlearning-that doesn’t fit neatly into columns or formatting and that appears as less when written down.
The moment doesn’t feel concluded beyond the fact that the calendar has turned. There is no clean slate when I’ve already lost count of how many times I’ve reset myself on insignificant days, without the momentum of January or fireworks to usher in altered versions of myself.
In the past, I surrendered easily to the ritual of resolutions-the kind that require a puritanical level of obedience-only to become another statistic that fails by March or April, at best. What followed was usually guilt, a sense of self betrayal, and an unravelling driven by defeat.
By mid year I would arrive at a familiar crossroads: either succumbing to the circumstances that followed, or slowly putting myself back together and choosing once again, to go all in on life.
By the end of the year, I felt turned inside out, upside down and hit with a tidal wave of exhaustion. The toll from the ongoing pursuit of perfection, self improvement and some elusive idea of success.
Standards according to who, I couldn’t tell you.
I won’t pretend I completely broke this pattern over the past twelve months. It’s one that I’ve noticed and repeated-for well over a decade, ever since I had the autonomy to make my own decisions.
What was different this year was in the intention-or rather, lack of. I didn’t enter the year with a grand resolution to become anything beyond what I had already committed myself to: showing up. Showing up in the spaces that I had already made arrangements for, as the version of myself I was capable of being. Remaining open minded, ready to be wrong and willing to learn from a place of curiosity. Allowing myself to receive what could be found simply by being present.
This approach removed the militant edge of rigid extremes, along with the reactive spiral that followed whenever I failed to meet unrealistic standards. The motivation shifted from do or die, to do what I can. There was no looming pressure threatening my entire sense of self if I happened to drift off my intended path. I knew I could come back and try again. I didn’t need to rebuild myself all over, because I wasn’t depleted by a punishing sense of failure.
Showing up, and doing what I could, was enough. At least, that’s what I finally let myself believe.
With commitments already made, and the requirement of my presence in certain spaces, half the work was already done. I knew where I needed to be and when. From there-I could take it or leave it, but by staying open to whatever was presented, it proved there was something valuable in the mundane and uncomfortable, worth more than finding the quickest escape route.
In the monotonous, I found something that had long felt foreign: stability.
I never considered myself drawn to drama, yet I had cultivated so much of it within my own inner world. A bad day at work? Quit. Life feels repetitive? Travel. Bored by stillness? Distract. Feeling upset? Destruct. For every unwanted state of being, I had learned to counter it with action-actions that created a new set of challenges. The kind that required my full attention to wade back through the chaotic sea of my own creation-to safety.
It worked, until it didn’t. Eventually I’d arrived in circumstances that no longer supported this cycle. As much as I’d devoted several years to self improvement, there is only so much that can grow without roots. Without realising, this system prevented those roots from forming at all.
What truly shifted in the past year was a loosening of expectations, paired with a level of acceptance that would make my former self recoil in horror.
I considered, wouldn’t doing the opposite of what I’d repeated for years and clearly had not been working for me-be bound to produce an opposite outcome?
Instead of pushing harder and adding pressure to gain, achieve and progress-beyond that lay a confronting yet simple level of clarity. I had been drowning in the quest for more, better. Driven by resistance to anything that felt slightly off-center. But I didn’t even know where center was.
Home had become a destination to aspire to, rather than a place I could already exist and restore myself. Sitting, observing and appreciating the foreign yet warm feeling of stillness, I opened the door to my home and made myself comfortable.
With that, much of the internal drama dissolved.
As long as I remained in tune with my basic intention-to show up and do what I was capable of-I found myself moving beyond familiar thresholds in ways that brought peace instead of chaos. This didn’t necessarily reflect in measurable stats like higher earnings or material abundance, but it did translate to better experiences. A calmer nervous system. A healthier body. Standards that rose naturally from recognising the value of peace and what it took to finally encounter it.
Not as a destination but as a state I could return to.
Does this mean my resolutions were the problem all along-the unseen enemy in all my other attempts at moving forward? I don’t think so.
But setting high expectations without the systems to support them left me overwhelmed when I couldn’t maintain them, and I reverted to unwanted habits simply to cope.
Approaching the past year with fewer promises and more grace to be human allowed me the space to be human-without giving up the moment perfection slipped out of reach.
- Jasmine
