Here’s to an awesome 2022

New beginnings are hard to resist. Even as we all slink back to work, waiting for Omicron to arrive, January is still full of promise. The slate is clean and that thought alone cheers us.

I am going to nail 2022, we say, and this early in the year, that goal is entirely possible. Well done you. You haven't failed yet.

The New Year 's resolution list is brimming with possibilities: you will be less (slimmer, owe less money, drink fewer negroni) and you will be more (increase your muscle mass, wash your sheets weekly rather than monthly, say no to that third season of

Emily in Paris).

Unless you are someone with a “high level of trait self- control”, self-improvement plans often eventually go out the window. (As early as January 19 for most fitness goals, according to data from running app Strava).

In an interview with The Atlantic,

Michael Inzlicht, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto, says those high trait self-control types, created through genes, culture and environment, “don't actually engage in more restraint of their behaviour and thoughts and emotions in the moment”, they are just not as easily distracted as the rest of us. They don't have to actively resist sleeping in instead of going to the gym, as it doesn't occur to them to skip the gym.

If the above description doesn't sound like you and, this year, you would like some of your resolutions to stick, psychologist Karen Nimmo has some advice (page 12), not least of which is that you don't need to do it all. “One thing done well will transform your life,” she says.

If a wardrobe overhaul is on your list, Tyson Beckett spoke with stylish people about how to go about it (pages 8-10) and there is some good news on page 11 if being happier is a 2022 target.

Good luck with the new you.