New Year, New You? Forget That! Here’s How To Make Habits Stick

Say what you will about New Year’s resolutions, but there’s a lot of power in fresh starts. New Year resolutions get a bad rep mostly because people put too much pressure on themselves to succeed at too many things at a time, and once the New Year’s hype has come and gone, the resolutions are left in the dust, along with the hopes and dreams we had of achieving them.

I fall prey to this a lot. I would have my brand new planner for the new year; a blank slate to start anew and become the person I envisioned in my daydreams. Wake early, meditate, work out, eat five servings of vegetables, drink three liters of water, read, floss, and sleep by 10pm being a few of the many habits I saw myself fulfilling from the moment the calendar page read Jan 1. However, the instant I failed at one of them, I despaired and thought myself a failure, then gave up the entire pursuit altogether. Sound familiar?

It took me many years and many books before I began to learn how to make habits stick, and which ones to work on first, so that others fall in place more easily. Charles Duhigg – author of the pivotal The Power Of Habit – calls it the keystone habit. For example, when you start exercising, better meal choices come much more naturally since you’ve kickstarted a healthy journey.

Another key realisation is that there is no perfect time to start a habit or make a change, so don’t wait for the stars to be in cosmic alignment or for next Monday to start working on yourself. Every new day is a fresh chance to start a new habit that helps you grow in the direction you want.

And forget about streaks! You meditated for 59 days straight then slipped up on the 60th, and now you’re back to zero. So what? Celebrate the fact that you successfully did it for a period of time, forgive yourself for falling off the wagon, then get back on and try again! Life happens. It’s not a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when.” Truly, the only constant is that nothing is.

With that in mind, here are three habits you could consider starting some time this year:

1. Morning Routine: You don’t have to be part of the 5am club but waking up to a clear and quiet morning can truly be life-changing. I’ll save you reading the (rather indulgent and unnecessarily lengthy book) but essentially you should start with physical activity – preferably enough to get your heart rate over 120 so you actually sweat – then do some journaling followed by reading or some form of learning. It echoes the same basics that I acquired from the Well Women Magical Morning workshop conducted by beloved Beijing expats Rebecca Archer and Hannah Northcott, though theirs is catchier and way more fun to learn about and practice. Whatever it is you choose to do in your pre-morning madness time, savour that serenity.

2. Nutrition Log: Almost everyone is dehydrated, from a sliding scale of mild to very. A simple water log app or even pen and paper will help you keep track of how much you drink. You’ll probably be surprised by how little that amount is, and in turn be encouraged to up that intake. It’s amazing how much better your body operates when well-hydrated, especially in Beijing’s dry winters. I might even suggest you go a step further and log your food intake with a simple photo app (maybe you’re already taking photos of your meals anyway!) like SHYE, aka See How You Eat. If you want to go even further, I recently had fun testing a free Water & Poop Tracker app by Zinitt , which allows me to track my bowel movements down to the minute, so you’ll never have to think twice about whether you already “went” today.

3. Photo/video diary: Let’s face it, the days go by in a blur when you’ve got kids, or a healthy social life. So it is really cool to have a straightforward visual diary of what you did last Tuesday, or where you went last summer. I’ve been on the free version of Day One for the longest time and when I’m dead tired, I just choose a photo of the day and save it with a short caption. One super handy feature is that I can tag each entry, so I can see how many times the kid fell sick in 2020 by calling up the “sick” tag. In 2022, I’m going to try the 1SE app which lets you save one second a day, and at the end of the year, you have a 6.5 minute long video of the entire year!