The tyranny of new year resolutions

It’s a new year, and I’m once again wondering whether I’ll ever learn that new year resolutions don’t work. 

I’m a sucker for a vision board and I love making lists. January often brings promises to commit to a healthier diet, an exercise regime, to reading an unrealistic number of books, remembering everyone’s birthdays and sending cards and gifts on time – all anticipated through a new productivity and organisation tool that I will employ to make my life more manageable. I’ll commit to walking at least 10,000 steps a day, drinking two litres of water (and remind myself to frontload my liquid intake to avoid interrupting my sleep with frequent loo breaks). Too much information, yes – but are you with me? 

New year resolutions are very human. We are people of ritual and like to mark the break between the past and the future. We want to live our best lives. But fulfilment does not come through the lists we make, the bodies we sculpt – or the things we put into them. 

Perhaps our new year resolutions are a sign that our hearts yearn for something more – something that can only be found in God. As St Augustine said: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” This highlights the truth that as created beings, we long for connection with our creator; that nothing else will satisfy this thirst. 

Living shouldn’t be this exhausting

Our culture, of course, doesn’t see it this way. Our algorithms spread the propaganda that we need sleep trackers, red light therapy masks, 20-minute pomodoro technique timers and bio-hacks such as intermittent fasting and optimised workouts. Living shouldn’t be this exhausting. The constant rollercoaster of self-improvement attempts followed by failure only makes the whole thing worse. As writer Oliver Burkeman puts it: “The effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable.”

If I’m being honest, Christian theology hasn’t served us well here. We talk about being saved by grace alone but, in most evangelical churches today, the Protestant work ethic - which pulls us towards more and more doing rather than being - is very much alive and well. 

How, then, should we approach 2026? Things have to get done. We know we are not to abuse our bodies but steward them, just as we should be good stewards of the earth. The Christian faith is not a permission slip for sloth or apathy.

Perhaps one response might be to start January by asking: How can I be? Rather than: What should I do? How can we be loving towards our neighbours? How can we be those who treat others as we want to be treated? How might we be those who “hunger and thirst” for God’s righteousness (Matthew 5:6)? How might we be people known for our love of each other and of God? 

The Christian story is one that calls us towards these things but simultaneously tells us there is grace when we inevitably fail. Now that’s good news for 2026.