Don't make NY resolutions!

You need a midlife revolution instead (Part 1)

My coaching exercise to show women how much they are handling

This is Part 1 of aiming for a New Year revolution rather than a list of resolutions. Next week I’ll post Part 2. Part 1 is about reviewing before resolving. And Part 2 is about creating a little midlife revolution instead of goals that goad you.

I’m not a fan of New Year Resolutions. It feels like way too much extra pressure right when you are feeling worn out from Christmas and a loooooong year (that was conversely never long enough to do all the fun stuff you wanted). New Year is definitely a marker point in the calendar where we get to reflect and then take a big sigh to start all over again. That’s not to say that’s not a good thing……I always think Spring, back-to-school-September and New year are those moments of mentally stepping into new shoes since the old ones are covered in mud and perhaps taking us slowly off course. 

But sometimes NEW YEAR!!!! (with jazz hands and caps and exclamation marks) just wants to make us crawl under our duvet with the weight of Christmas indulgence and press snooze over and over despite the resolute resolution to get up at 6am to do yoga before making a detox juice and cranking out 1000 words of the book you are definitely going to write this year / start painting / hillwalking / journaling and meditating and all the other promises you made for your future self who is still your current self but with more expectations. 

Yes, there is hope of a NEW YEAR, NEW YOU! or so every TikTok and Instagram tells you. But you are fine. Absolutely wonderful “just the way you are” (to quote from the movie of the Queen of New Year Resolutions, Brigid Jones). 

Because New Year resolutions often just become another stick to beat yourself with - another expectation to meet, another demand to respond to, another ideal to stretch to. 

Not that I’m not a fan of goals… I’m a coach, so gearing up for goals is in my DNA. But goal grinding is not something that is good for us. Big Goals are great, but I know it takes little steps, lots of little intentional habits and changes that make those goals a reality. 

I am also a big fan of reviews. Life can run at such breakneck speed you barely get a moment to seep in the smug satisfaction of ticking something off your never-ending to-do list before the next one glares up at you expectantly full of demands. For women especially, you can forget how much you do.

Often in coaching I encourage my clients to stop and review, to just remind herself how much she does. Even on a daily basis I always end my journal template with reflection, just a review of the day and how much I dealt with and managed.

Whatever you’ve achieved, it’s likely a lot.   It’s likely far more than you have given yourself credit for (or been given credit for).

All those little moments of love and care that you dished out along with the dinners. 

All those thoughts you kept in your head to keep someone else alive, alert, less alone, more supported. 

The sheer sanity-sucking emotional and physical workload of facilitating people’s lives - perhaps partners, parents, children, colleagues, friends. 

Never mind, your own ambitions for your work, and / or yourself. 

The ambitions to get clearer on what you want. The ambitions to feel more joy and presence among the doing and responsibility. The ambitions to matter more in your own midlife. To keep growing, evolving, learning, changing, being better, being bolder, being happier, being healthier, being more peaceful, being more content, having better boundaries, having any boundaries, having clarity on a relationship, investing more time on yourself, having more equality at work and in the home, finding a sense of self, reconnecting to a sense of fun and joy. 

These are all reasons why someone came to me for coaching this year. 

So in my own review, here are some of the headliners:

What I achieved 

Creating a functional family 2 years post-divorce for my children, that keeps my own boundaries safe

Overseas holiday with kids 

Fun trips with pals

Hard work stuff (but also fun work stuff)

Gave attention to my health

Kept up (mostly) a decent fitness regime 

Changed my car

Bought a robot hoover that has changed my life. 

Did a dry January for the first time in my life.

Had a few work successes and continued to build

Launched this Substack which I LOVE

Started next book

What I didn’t do

Find enough time for romance

Meet the love of my life to let me off the dating apps

Find my abs

Get enough sleep

Get as consistent as I’d like on the exercise / eat less sugar front 

And here’s what’s not included above but which I still did: 

453 dinners for other people

156 yoga sessions on my kitchen floor before my kids woke up

215 loads of washing (this is based on 4 per week plus the random “emergency” ones when they come back from their dads with no uniforms washed or they NEED!!!! something (In caps and always with exclamation marks) washed for life and death reasons. 

Absorption of 3,662,824 sets of rolled teenage eyes

1284 hoovering sessions (to be dramatically reduced due to Black Friday indulgence in a robot hoover).

3,413,453,572,857,209,683,685,463 picked up plates and cups from various random locations around the house. 

And so much domestic blah blah blah I can’t even dredge up the stats. 

It’s so important to review what you’ve done before you plan what you’re going to do because context is everything. The woman on TikTok with baby skin and a micro-menopause belly?  She’s likely not doing all that you’re doing. She has more help than you. She has more money to spend on giving her the baby skin.  

Knowing the context of your current life is the only way to decide what steps you can make to make it easier for you next year.

I have a little exercise that I sometimes give women who are feeling overwhelmed - because somehow they feel it’s their fault they aren’t coping very well. It’s really simple. I get them to draw a stick woman (no expectations on art work, or trying to gauge bum size).  Her arms are raised in either a stance of total surrender or superwoman defiance.  For many of us, it’s usually a mixture of both. 

Then I get them to draw some balls. No, not those ones.  We have them already…. we just don’t brag about them.  I mean the balls in the air they juggle. Every time they think they‘re finished, I ask them “What else?” and they remember more. 

Sometimes when they’ve finished the exercise, there is silence while the penny drops. They’ve just been upset about dropping a ball but when the actual penny drops they realise the problem isn’t that they may have dropped a ball, but that there are just so many damned balls.  There are too many balls!

This is mine from a couple of years ago:

So a little review helps to remind you just how much you juggle, how much you handle and how much you have achieved this year.  

There is always a risk it might not feel enough. Because you maybe spent so much time achieving so many things for so many people you didn’t get to achieve as much as you perhaps wanted for yourself. That’s ok.

It just means you take that knowledge into the New Year as a warrior cry not a wail. 

So in your review, really acknowledge how much you’ve done. 

Then think about what areas of your life you’d like to move forward on. Not a NEW YOU!  Not a better YOU!!  Not a YOU with bells and whistles on…. That just makes your feel more of a performing monkey.  

This is about you evolving as a person, not making huge leaps that you can’t sustain, but small, significant changes. More water. Fifteen minutes more exercise. Tallying up what you achieve each week in work so you can talk yourself up at your next review and ask for more money. Delegate more chores. Make a little more time for things that bring you joy. Small changes that make big differences over time. 

That’s why I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions... it’s about having a New Year revolution. The revelation that you need to overthrow the old ways and have a courageous coup with yourself.   But not in a setting yourself up for failure way.   Not the massive leap and bounds but the small steady steps. 

So this Part 1 is all about the review, and next week I’ll talk more about the habits and goals you can start to define. 

Go through each month, each relationship, each term, each season, each child, each issue and remind yourself what happened. How much you handled.

Make a list of things that didn’t work, your triggers, the icks, and tensions and frustrations that held you back or drained your emotional bandwidth.

Make a list of the things that did work, your glimmers, the slicks, and joys and uplifts, that lifted you or grew you in some way.

In Part 2 next week I’ll show you how to use this to create your midlife revolution, no beating sticks required. I’d love to know in the comments how you get on!

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I’m running my free 5 day Happier Happier Challenge Adventure again, starting on the 1st January. Each day I’ll send you a short video and prompt to help you build a happier mindset for the year ahead. All the details are here

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If you’d like to take a moment to check in on your life to see how you can manage things differently, you can book a one hour 1:1 Discovery Coaching Session with me where you get to think about you, how to manage this life you are living, and invest some time and thought on you. Radical idea that, is it? To invest some time and thought on you? Details are here. 

Paid subscribers get a 10% discount - just email me at alana@alanakirk.com

www.themidlifecoach.org