It’s the last day of the year, and somehow you’re still awake at 11:59pm, staring at your phone screen that says “One minute to midnight.” You tell yourself, this year will be different. You’ll go jogging. You’ll drink eight glasses of water. You’ll stop replying “ok can” to every group chat because you actually have boundaries now. You’ll save money, find love, or finally stop doom-scrolling TikTok until 2am.
Then, just as the fireworks start, you whisper to yourself, “New year, new me.”
Fast forward to February — you’re still the same you. Same phone, same stress, same half-eaten salad in the fridge that you swore you’d start liking. Somewhere along the way, your “new me” got tired and decided to go on permanent leave.
But maybe that’s not your fault.
According to Kristie Hedges in her Forbes article, “Why Your New Year’s Resolution Will Fail by February 1,” most people fail because they secretly expect to. We set big, vague, lofty goals that look nice on paper but feel impossible when real life starts throwing us curveballs. By February, we’re back to where we started — except now we feel guilty about it.
And honestly, can you blame us? These days, resolutions sound less like dreams and more like deadlines. Everything has turned into a competition: who can meditate longer, who reads more books, who’s more “healed,” who has a better morning routine involving lemon water and gratitude journaling before sunrise.
Maybe the problem isn’t that we make resolutions — maybe it’s that we treat them like performance reviews for our lives.
So instead of setting ourselves up for disappointment, maybe we should rethink what “starting fresh” actually means. Here are five gentler, more realistic ways to start the year — Singapore-style.
1. Start Small, Stay Kind
Let’s be honest — we always overshoot. Every December, people suddenly become motivational speakers. “This year I will wake up at 5am, exercise for one hour, journal for thirty minutes, and drink only green smoothies.”
Eh, please. If you usually wake up at 9am, you’re not suddenly becoming a 5am person overnight. Start smaller. Wake up ten minutes earlier. Go for a short walk after lunch. Drink one more cup of water than you did yesterday.
It sounds simple, but being kind to yourself is actually revolutionary in a world that constantly tells you to hustle. You don’t need to punish yourself to prove you’re changing. The goal is not to become a brand-new person. It’s to be a slightly better friend to yourself.
Because when you start from kindness, everything else follows naturally — habits, routines, even motivation. But when you start from guilt, all you’ll get is burnout with a side of regret.
So this year, try small. Try gentle. Try realistic. Your body and brain will thank you.
2. Rest Is Also Progress
If there’s one thing Singaporeans are bad at, it’s resting. We love to say, “Wah, I so tired,” but the moment someone tells us to relax, we’ll reply, “Cannot lah, I got things to do.” We treat rest like a luxury when it should really be part of maintenance.
But think about it: every machine needs downtime. Even your phone takes a break to charge. So why are you expecting yourself to function non-stop?
Rest doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’re recharging. Sleep in on a Saturday. Say no to one unnecessary meeting. Sit at a kopitiam, drink your kopi peng, and just... exist for a while.
The world won’t fall apart if you pause. In fact, it might feel a little lighter when you return. Productivity without rest is just exhaustion with good PR.
3. Make It Yours, Not Instagram’s
Every year, people post their goals online: “This year, I’m going to run a marathon!” “I’m starting a side hustle!” “I’m finally learning French!”
Good for them. But that doesn’t mean you need to follow.
Social media has tricked us into thinking that everyone else’s goals should be ours too. We want to become “that girl” or “that guy” — the one who drinks matcha instead of kopi, goes hiking every weekend, and somehow looks fresh at 7am. But half the time, these goals don’t even belong to us.
So before writing your resolution list, ask yourself: “Is this something I really want, or something I think I should want?”
If you hate running, why torture yourself with a marathon? Maybe your version of self-care is just dancing in your living room or taking evening walks after dinner. If your goal this year is to nap more — that’s valid. If it’s to text your mother back — also valid.
The best resolutions are the ones that make your life feel better, not just look better online.
4. Celebrate Progress, Not Perfection
We love to measure success in extremes: all or nothing, win or lose, success or failure. But real life isn’t like that. Sometimes progress is slow. Sometimes it’s invisible. Sometimes it’s just getting out of bed on a tough day and deciding, “Okay, I’ll try again tomorrow.”
If your goal was to save $200 a month but you only managed $50 — celebrate that $50. It’s still movement. If you wanted to read 12 books but only finished three, that’s three more than last year.
Perfection is a moving target. Progress, on the other hand, is something you can see and feel.
Be proud of the small wins. Life’s hard enough — you don’t need to wait until you’ve “made it” to feel proud. You can celebrate the trying, the adjusting, the surviving. That’s where the real growth hides.
5. Don’t Turn Your Life Into a Project
This one’s important. Somewhere along the way, we turned “improvement” into a full-time job. We measure our worth by how productive we are. Even our rest has become performative: “Self-care Sunday,” “Detox week,” “Digital Sabbath.”
But here’s the truth — you’re not a project to be managed. You’re a person to be understood.
You don’t have to constantly upgrade yourself like software. You don’t need to set metrics for happiness. Sometimes, you just need to exist. Not everything has to become a goal or achievement.
If you catch yourself thinking, “I’m not doing enough,” maybe the real question is: Who told me that?
Sometimes, the most radical resolution is to make none at all. To let yourself live, quietly and honestly, without feeling guilty for not being “productive.”
Because here’s the secret: growth still happens even when you’re not tracking it. You’ll still learn, change, adapt — just maybe in ways no spreadsheet can capture.
So maybe this year, you don’t need another resolution. You just need a different mindset. One that says, “I can be enough even while becoming.”
When the clock strikes midnight and everyone’s shouting “New year, new me!”, maybe you can smile and whisper something softer:
“Same me, lah. Just trying to be a little kinder.”
Because sometimes, that’s more than enough.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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