40 little ways to make your life a whole lot better

Drastic new year’s resolutions are hard to keep, so Claire Coleman has suggested small ways to change your habits that can make a big difference

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, hope springs eternal, despite overwhelming evidence they simply don’t work for most of us. An Australian study found 80 per cent of people who make New Year’s resolutions will have dropped them by the second week of February, while data logged by the fitness tracker, Strava, was even more pessimistic, suggesting most people are likely to ditch their plans on Jan 19.

Alex Allan, a nutritional therapist, is not surprised by these findings.

“Extreme New Year’s resolutions often barely make it to the second week of January,” she says.

So this year, rather than setting yourself up for failure, we’re proposing 40 anti-resolutions, whether your goals are to save the planet, lose weight, get more active, sleep better or just to be happier.

These are, as Alex puts it, “simple changes that will make a big difference in the long term, because long-term habit changes are the only thing that works”.

Lifestyle coach Anne Iarchy says: “Doing something is always better than nothing. Start making small changes consistently and build up. Most people are all or nothing; if it’s not perfect they feel like a failure. But every small change you make over time will make a big difference.”

Don’t feel you have to immediately embark on all 40, pick a handful, and when they feel like ingrained habits, pick a few more. Make 2022 the year that you change your life for the better, without even noticing it.