TRY THE MID-YEAR RESOLUTION
There’s always time to make a change – even if it’s a belated one, says Viv Groskop
‘Meaningful changes are often stop-start’
This time last year my phone gifted me a revelation. Fed up with my own broken promises about ‘only drinking at the weekend’ or ‘only drinking one unit a night in lockdown’ (yeah, right), I downloaded the Try Dry app. Turns out you can do Dry January whenever you want. I became obsessed with clicking ‘Dry’ at the end of the day and racking up the numbers of my latest ‘Dry Streak’. It gave me back control and made me realise how powerful a ‘maybe it will work, maybe it won’t’ mid-year resolution can be. I don’t usually make resolutions, you see. While I’d love to get Paltrow-level peachy butt cheeks via simple and effective regular body brushing or become expert at meditation, I somehow never find the time to commit. No, not even this past year. I am wary of the fake certainty of New Year’s resolutions, which we all know don’t last beyond the first hangover of January. But the flawed, belated, mid-year resolution fixes that. It has failure and realism built in because you already started ‘too late’. The mid-year resolution is the flaky but loveable best friend of resolutions: she’s not perfect but she will always be there for you. You wouldn’t want her to train you for the Olympics, but she’s good at reminding you to put your trainers on and get out of the house even if you only do half the 5K and end up making a slight detour for takeout coffee. Change is about imperfect, everyday long-term commitments that you can actually stick to. Like my intention to do ‘daily yoga practice’, which never seemed to evolve into, er, doing any practice at all. Now I commit to once a week and see anything else as a bonus. Meaningful changes in life are often stop-start. So plan to fail a little in advance. What are you going to do when you fall off the wagon? What’s your plan for a bad day? What’s your strategy for an even worse day? This is where the energy of summer really comes into its own. You’re starting at a random point in the year. You’re not aiming to change everything overnight. No one needs to know that you have a resolution. You barely even have to admit it to yourself. There’s something very comforting about the midway point of the year, too, because, well, there’s only six months of it left to go.
And, crucially, right now the elements are cheering you on. When the sun is shining, it’s easier to get outside and take on that 5K. The weather wants you to eat watermelon sorbet. The sky itself is encouraging you. Hell, I don’t even know if I want that takeout coffee any more; I am actively craving water instead. What is this witchcraft? It’s the power of the seasons, of course, which is way more powerful than one fake milestone day at the depressing tail-end of weeks of festive indulgence. This is the one time of year when everything is on your side and you even have days and days on end in which to mess up a bit and start all over again. If a New Year’s resolution is an uphill struggle in woolly tights, salopettes and a bobble hat, then a mid-year summer resolution is a downhill ride on a bike in a bikini, flip-flops and pigtails. (Okay, let’s not get carried away yet, I have only just started my body-brushing. But I will get there. Maybe.) Best of all, this kind of realist’s resolution ticks the box that really yields results: ‘Done is better than perfect’. Lower your expectations. Make it easy. Make it messy. Make it do-able. Do it when the weather’s on your side. Do it half-arsed. But do it. I have already done some brief, haphazard skin-brushing over one buttock this week and my Dry Streak is on Day 44. This is (slow, real, sun-kissed) progress. We can do this!
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The Story (Transworld) by Viv Groskop is out now