The Babylonians made the new year a festival of self-flagellation, despite their resolutions being more about appeasing gods than weight loss or cutting back on booze. They carried out their rituals in the Middle East in the spring, not in the British January. The idea of punishment over joy was revived in 1740 by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who included a promise never to laugh.
It doesn't have to be this way. We could use our worst habits to serve us better instead of being motivated by guilt and shame. We might be more successful, productive, and happier if we were lazier, slower, and more aware. Here is how.
Make peace with your body.
Most of the body positivity movement encourages us to love our bodies no matter what they look like. The Body Liberation project was started by a fat and black woman who wanted to celebrate themselves. Thin, straight white women have co-opted it by emphasizing a little bit of cellulite or fat rolls and saying, 'I love myself anyway'. That was not the point of the movement.
The visual dominance of women who are very close to the Europeanised beauty ideal can be painful and frustrating for those who live far away from it, as well as for anyone with severe body image issues. King says that body positivity is setting people up for failure. Body neutrality is possible. King says that he can look in the mirror and be at peace with his body. I can learn not to say I look ugly. I can say that this is the body I am living in today, and I am going to work towards being neutral about it.
If you live in a black body, a trans body or a disabled body, you can love yourself with all your heart, but that doesn't mean that you're not going to face systemic oppression in the world because of your body. Body liberation is about asking if I can come to a place of acceptance and love for my own body, and work towards dismantling the systems of oppression that make it difficult for all of us to be able to do so.
The Guardian has a photograph by Kellie French. Elena Horn is the set styling.
Be lazy.
A productivity expert who isn't necessarily into making people more productive is Kendra Adachi. She is interested in helping us figure out which things in our lives matter to us, how to do them well, and then being lazy about all the others. She says that we should organize our lives in ways that reflect what is important to us, rather than to our parents, colleagues friends or neighbours. Adachi was accepting that she wouldn't be the kind of mother who volunteered in her children's school, but could be the kind who donated money and materials, and that was just as valid.
You can learn to love negative emotions.
When your cat dies, someone will say, "Never mind, you can get a new cat." Robert Biswas-Diener, a positive psychologist and author of The Upside of Your Dark Side, says there are two things that go wrong with toxic positivity. When your friend comes to you wanting support, what they want and what you offer has to match, but often it doesn't. Toxic positivity feels invalidating when we try to cheer someone up who just wants to be heard. When a parent or partner wants to solve a problem instead of talking about it, we all feel this.
They want to fix things in part because they can't bear being near difficult feelings, and this is the second problem with toxic positivity: it often masks a distrust of uncomfortable or unpleasant emotions. Negative emotions such as fear, jealousy, anger, guilt and sadness are good things. They are the way we navigate the social world because people don't spend a lot of time ignoring negative emotions, and they get out of touch with them.
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If you suppress one emotion, you suppress all of them. When things go wrong in the future, we won't be caught off guard by both events and our own reactions. It is almost impossible to be resilient if you have never had to deal with anger, sadness or fear.
The change in how he parented was that he affirmed his son's anger or disappointment, meaning he grew up skilled at dealing with difficult feelings. Giving ourselves permission to feel sad or anxious can be done by giving them time and space to do so, rather than being chased away with busy lives and booze.
Be disorganized.
neatness and organisation can exact a high price, according to the book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. According to authors David H Freedman and Eric Abrahamson, messy systems are often more robust and flexible, which means that keeping everything shipshape can be an unnecessary waste of time or money. They say that disorganised people, institutions and systems are more efficient, resilient, creative and effective than highly organised ones. We have been told that being well organised is a good, without ever asking if that is true.
Next time someone tells you to tidy up your desk or drawer, remind them that Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds of all time.
The Guardian has a photograph by Kellie French. Elena Horn is the set styling.
Be aware.
Dr Julieta Galante, a neuroscience researcher at Cambridge University, says that meditation was never thought of as a way to calm down in a crisis. That is a western take on it.
New Nice guidance suggests that there should be a recommendation for meditation before taking medication for depression. It has been shown that up to 25% of meditators experience negative effects, including anxiety, panic attacks, disrupted sleep and emotional or physical dissociation. Galante thinks that meditation should be listed with potential side-effects and interactions in mind, rather than being something anyone can start on their own, with no trained support to fall back on if things go wrong. It isn't bad, but it won't make life better for everyone who tries it.
Sometimes you want to listen to some music while you are driving.
Be more mindless. "You don't want to be focused on one thing every single second," says Biswas-Diener. Sometimes you want to listen to some music while you are driving, rather than notice the things that stink. Those are all thoughts from mindlessness.
Work less.
Alex says there is a century of research that shows overwork is counter productive. It makes us less productive, less happy, increases the risks of burnout and of chronic disease, it negatively affects company performance, whether you are working in a factory, for the NHS or in a police station, you are more likely to cut corners and to overlook small but crucial details. He says that the only bits of the labour industry that don't make sense are nonprofits trying to save the world or hedge funds trying to destroy the world. For the rest of us, working less, but better, makes sense.
The Guardian has a photograph by Kellie French. Elena Horn is the set styling.
Love your stuff.
Bethan Laura Wood is a maximalist designer who collects a lot of stuff. My home has a lot of objects in it and it feels uncomfortable for some people. Being in a space with less stuff is uncomfortable for me. Wood thinks we should only be deferring if we really want to. If you take all your stuff down, dust it, and decide you like it, you won't feel bad.
There is a branch of psychology that looks at the connection between our stuff, our identity and our sense of home. Dr Christian Jarrett is a psychologist and author of Be Who You Want - Unlocking the Science of Personality Change. Our belongings have meaning. They connect us to our past or loved ones by being extensions of ourselves or the people who once owned them. It would be unjust to expect you to dispose of your stuff without paying a price. We don't need to feel guilty about not doing a Marie Kondo. One of the pleasures of being invited to someone's home is seeing their collection of objects, telling the story of their life.
Abandon meaningfulness.
The pursuit of meaning is not a bad thing according to Wendy Syfret, author of The Sunny Nihilist: How aMeaningless Life Can Make You Truly Happy. Good for you if you want to spend your whole life in a monastery. Everything around us has to have meaning, and every single consumer product is presented as life-changing, because meaning has become so intensely commodified. It is obvious that meaning is a construct and if everything is meaningful, then nothing is.
"This creates an incredible vortex of pressure that no one can live up to, but I want to help us realise our own insignificance, but cheerfully." Nihilism is about being free from pressure rather than being selfish and it powers her activism.
People tell us that we should care about things to get us to invest ourselves in them, and that we should work harder for less money. When we are offered meaning which is not the same as quantifiable value, we should ask what the person is trying to convey. Is this a message that is trying to control me?
The Guardian has a photograph by Kellie French. Elena Horn is the set styling.
Don't diet.
Shahroo Izadi, a behavior change expert and author of The Last Diet, says that before you try a diet or exercise programme, you should treat yourself and your body the way you would want the person you love most to speak to themselves. You may notice that you are much softer with yourself, you forgive yourself quickly, you are compassionate, and you treat your body in a moreholistic way.
Many of Izadi's clients focus on the outcome, rather than adjusting their behavior. People think that the result will teach them a lot of new skills. I often tell them to imagine they have already lost weight, and that they are still enjoying their life. They start to realize that the way to keep off the weight is to move away from the all-or-nothing mentality and not moralise their food choices. People need comfort from feelings of guilt, shame, and blame, and food is their comfort.
What can we do to make our relationship with food better? Izadi says to have a conversation with yourself. It isn't until we do some internal inquiry that we realise that we have been taught to think of food as bad. She says that this is not how we should experience food. It is counter-productive for those who want to stop eating to change their feelings. Start factchecking, debating and trying to change that voice.
The Guardian has a photograph by Kellie French. Elena Horn is the set styling.
Being single is a good thing.
Every day, women say, 'Oh, you look so happy.' Helen Thorn is one half of Scummy Mummies and author of Get Divorced: Be Happy. I can tell you that divorce is the best thing that ever happened to me, even though I can not make that decision for you. All of the time, I am having a great time. I wouldn't recommend your husband having an affair, but that's okay.
Thorn isn't against marriage. I am not anti-love. She is more clear-sighted about how sometimes people are pressured to be in a couple or stay in a relationship for the sake of children, now that she is divorced and a single parent. Being single was the thing that I was worried about the most. I thought it would break me. There are many forms of love. Being single has given me the happiness I thought marriage would give me. I have everything I need.
She says life and parenting are easier than when she was married. It is hard to be single in many ways, but romance is lovely when it works. I have created this life for myself, and now I don't have to worry about anyone complaining about how I cook my pasta.
Use your anger for good.
Professor David Lebel, who studies the effects of so-called negative emotions at the Joseph M Katz Graduate School of Business, says there will be anger in the next year. The question is how you are going to handle it. There are times when anger is functional and times when it is not. There is a difference between in-the-moment anger and future use of that anger. Do you explode at a meeting? Do you think what that person said is upsetting? I will address it, but not now. You can't tell anger to go away because it's too strong, it's not comfortable, and it's going to take some time to be calm.
We are taught at school not to look out the window and to be busy-ness has status.
Lebel says that anger is useful. Something is disrupted and that is why you feel angry. The first thing to do is label it: I am angry about this. You can't make it functional if you don't know what you're angry about. I tell people to draw on that anger in the future, not to match the intensity, but to supply energy and move away from reactionary blow-ups.
If you use anger positively, you can improve diversity at work, help your partner and child navigate the aftermath of a nasty row, or take sides in a conflict.
Care less.
Sarah Knight is the author of No Fucks Given books and You Do You, an alternative self-help series about putting yourself first and giving less of a damn about other people's expectations of your behavior. Knight moved to the Dominican Republic because her job in publishing made her not to be herself and gave her panic attacks. People think that she has no direction, no commitments, and no limitations. That is not true, and part of the reason is that I don't live the way society tells me to. I remind people that it is ok to pull back, it is ok to say no, and it is not important to me. You can decide in your career, in your marriage, in your art, as a parent. You can decide if you want to be organised, if you want to be slender, and if you want to get a promotion. You don't have to measure yourself against other people's standards.
Rest better.
On Radio 4, the author of The Art of Rest, a psychology lecturer and host of All in the Mind, says rest is good for us. She says that the key is to find something that feels good to you and not feel guilty about it. Many people find sitting on the sofa relaxing. You don't have to spend a lot of money on candles to have a relaxing bath. They can't rest until they've exhausted their body, and they can't clear their mind. If you want to keep your mind occupied but not focused, the activities recommended by Hammond include jigsaws or gardening, listening to music, spending empty time alone, and giving yourself permission to not achieve anything in particular.
We feel bad about resting. As adults, we think busy people are more organised and successful, and there are experiments that show that, because we are taught not to stare out of the window, we are more organised.
The Guardian has a photograph by Kellie French. Elena Horn is the set styling.
You can read a book and watch telly.
Lucy has never been caught up in self-improvement. The writer says that he is resistant and stubborn about people making him do things. I am not going to give in to people who want me to have a side hustle or improve myself.
It is easy to forget that you don't have to have a skills-based sideline in order to be a fully realised human. You could read a book. As we get older, the reasons we encourage children to read will not disappear. It increases our ability to empathise and gives us the ability to articulate our own interior world, even if it doesn't go quite so far.
If we have fallen out of the habit, what should we do? Wodehouse or Maeve Binchy are examples. Don't look for something you think you should read. I will hit you in the face if I see you looking at the Booker long list.
Ignore people for a while.
Many of us already know we should use our phones less, but the thing that sucks us back in is the need to reply to people. The author of a new book says that the pressure is all in our heads. She says that other people care more than they do. She spoke to many people who were afraid to turn off their notifications. We are frightened that no one will notice we are gone. Many of us don't turn off notifications because we like them and they make us feel important. The more we respond, the more we get back in response. The people in our texts, messages and inboxes should not expect quick responses. We behave as if we can complete the task, but we can never do it. So step away.
Don't make resolutions.
Jeffrey Marsh says that the only choice is to approach yourself with as much kindness as possible. A life-affirming video has been watched over a billion times, and the author of How to Be You is a memoir of growing up non-binary in rural Pennsylvania. Will you end up 20 pounds lighter if you hate your guts into losing 20 pounds? Maybe, maybe not. Hate your guts is what you will have practised.
How do we learn to be kind? Will I be able to be kind to myself? Most people have self-hate that drives their resolutions. It is easy to say I will lose 20 pounds. It is not familiar to say, "I'm going to deeply love myself, no matter what." It may be the most difficult thing to learn in one's lifetime, but it can also be the most fun and exciting process of one's life.
