Don’t be too tough on yourself as another new year dawns

IT is incredible how quickly the mood changes. Feet up over the festive period, bragging rights are reserved for how little we have moved in the few days between Christmas and New Year, how many cheesy films we consumed and how much literal cheese we have devoured.

Unhappily, the first of January brings a sharp dose of reality. A shock to a system that has survived on a cocktail of alcohol, carbohydrates and afternoon naps.

Now is the time to shed our inner festive slob and become our best selves. Faced with the first dawn of a new year, it is time to unveil our new and improved ‘20 selves.

The stroke of midnight has transformed us into morning people who love the gym and shun processed foods. We will clear our work emails out every night and learn a new language. We will be more patient partners and kinder pals. We will be better.

Except it is never as simple as that. We are all prone to getting a bit melancholy and misty-eyed as the Lone Piper atop Edinburgh Castle strikes up just before the bells but it is easy to get too caught up in the personal pressures which accompany the mere change of a calendar.

Of course, it does not help that social media has morphed into our personal end-of-year highlands reel. On New Year’s Eve we delivered heartfelt speeches thanking everyone who contributed to the past 12 months as if accepting an Oscar for starring in our own lives. We reposted smiling photos against exotic backdrops; showing off how happy, loved and adventurous we were. (Most of it was true.)

I have been the person who tried to change their entire way of living in

January, only to find myself with half a dozen abandoned resolutions two weeks into the month, furious that the alpha version of myself has not come into being with the passing of an entire fortnight.

So, while I do not grudge anyone who sees the start of the new year as an opportunity for a fresh start, January 1 no longer fills me with the desire to change every facet of my life. I do not think any of us should be encouraged to reduce our previous year’s self to list of failures and shortcomings. It is good to have goals and necessary to embrace change but we are naive to believe that a new year will provide us with a completely clean break and should be sceptical of anyone who tries to sell us any notion to the contrary.

On the first day of 2020, I am exactly the same person I was during the final hours of 2019 – although perhaps with the addition of a whisky-induced hangover – but, for the most part, I am in no rush to change that. I’ve got one more day to laze on the couch.