Be honest. Did you quit yet? 

I'm not saying this in a judgmental way, more in a “let’s stop lying to ourselves before noon” way. Because nothing exposes our delusion like the first few weeks of January. It smells like possibility, but it behaves like a trap. One minute you’re swearing you’ve unlocked a new personality, the next minute you’re eating cold pasta over the sink thinking, “I’ll just start again tomorrow.” Tomorrow becomes Monday. Monday becomes “after this busy week.” And suddenly it’s March and you’re like, “Wait, are we… still in the same year?”

So… did you quit yet? Maybe you promised yourself you’d become a morning person, despite having a ten-year history of treating sunrise like a personal attack. Maybe you vowed to read a book a week when the last book you finished was The Fault in Our Stars in 2014. Maybe you swore you’d stop dating emotionally unavailable people, right before texting one at 1:12 a.m. because “he liked my story” and your brain translated that as fate, not muscle memory

Or maybe your resolution wasn’t even a goal. Maybe it was more like… an energy. An aesthetic. A personality you tried to download like an app. New Year, New Me. Except the “new me” still has the same brain fog, same triggers, same taste for instability, same inability to fold laundry until you have nothing left to wear.

Here’s the thing no one says out loud: quitting isn’t the failure. Sometimes the resolution was the lie. We act like bailing on a habit proves we’re weak, when half the time it just proves the habit was built for someone we’re not. Because if you quit waking up at 5am after three days, maybe the problem isn’t discipline, maybe you hate mornings and you’ve always done your best thinking at 10pm. If you quit journaling after a week, maybe you don’t need a notebook, you need a conversation, with an actual human who can say, “You’re not crazy, you’re just overwhelmed.” If you quit the gym by January 10th, maybe you don't like the gym. Maybe you like walking with a podcast. Or dancing in your kitchen. Or not working out at all for a bit because your nervous system is fried and you need rest more than you need a reformer class. Because newsflash: movement counts even if it doesn’t involve weights, a matching set, and a protein shaker performing in your Instagram story.

We treat quitting like a moral collapse. Like you’ve betrayed the entire self-improvement industrial complex because you missed three days of Duolingo. It’s not. It’s data. Quitting is your life saying, “Hey babe, this plan does not fit.” In fact, it’s a fitting room moment. The goal zipped up in the mirror, and it wasn’t giving what you thought it would give.

And here’s where it gets sneaky: instead of saying, “This doesn’t fit me,” you say, “I don’t fit this.” You decide you’re the problem. You label yourself inconsistent, dramatic, lazy, “all talk.” You drag that story into every new attempt, like a bad ex who insists on showing up to every party. Every time you bail on an unrealistic resolution, you don’t just drop the goal; you collect another piece of “evidence” that you can’t trust yourself. And that’s the real loss. Not the gym streak, not the reading challenge, but the erosion of your own belief that you can pick something and follow through.

So did you quit yet? Good. Now we can talk about what you actually want. Maybe you don’t want a six-pack. Maybe you want to stop feeling winded when you run for the train. Maybe you don’t want to read 52 books this year. Maybe you want to read one and actually remember the plot. Maybe you don’t want a “clean girl” morning routine. Maybe you want to stop waking up with your phone practically suctioned to your face like a sleep mask.

Maybe you don’t want a new life. Maybe you want your current one to feel less like a to-do list and more like… a life. What if your resolution wasn’t a punishment? What if it wasn’t a rebrand? What if it wasn’t a performance for your imaginary audience, the people you think are constantly watching and evaluating you but are actually too busy spiraling about themselves? What if it was something small and human and unremarkable, a change that doesn’t look impressive but feels supportive?

Drink a glass of water before coffee. Put your phone in another room at night. Stop saying yes when your whole body screams no. Take a walk instead of spiraling on the couch. Eat a vegetable because it makes you less cranky, not because you’re trying to enter your “glow era.” These aren’t resolutions. They’re life preservers. And the best part? They’re incredibly hard to quit.

So let me ask one last time, gently: did you quit yet? If you did, congratulations. You’re finally free to make a goal that fits the shape of your actual life, not the fantasy version you keep auditioning for. A life where change is allowed to be small, and boring, and imperfect, and still count. This time, committed to yourself that you’re not starting over. You’re starting honest. And that’s the only meaningful way to actually change. Until next time x