Happy New You?

When I was in my early twenties, working as an assistant on a magazine, the headline ‘New Year, New You’ was a recurring joke. It had become a cliché long ago and someone always said it in the January issue meeting. When we were running low on new ways to sell the ‘fresh start’ feeling that comes with 1 January, someone would always fill a silence with: ‘How about: New Year, New You!’ Cue weary guffaws. 

Recently, I have thought about the fact that I sat in meetings 20 years ago, watching the editors of that era laughing about how old and tired the idea of ‘New Year, New You’ was. Over the past ten days, I’ve read plenty of articles about new year’s resolutions: how to make good habits stick, how to get more sleep or eat more veg, how to get through Dry January. And I have read just as many decrying the very notion of new year’s resolutions: they’re pointless, ineffective, nothing but another stick with whic…