Why New Year’s Resolutions Are a Waste of Your Time (And What to Do Instead)

It’s Not About the Resolution. It Never Was.

Let me be blunt with you: if you’re pinning your hopes on a New Year’s resolution to finally change your life, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Again.

I’m not saying this to be harsh. I’m saying it because I care about you actually getting what you want out of this one wild life. And resolutions? They’re the junk food of personal development—satisfying for about five minutes, then leaving you worse off than before.

Here’s the truth nobody wants to hear: change isn’t about thinking—it’s about doing. And doing requires consistency. Not motivation. Not inspiration. Consistency.

And consistency? That doesn’t come from a resolution you scribbled on a cocktail napkin at midnight while champagne was still fizzing in your glass.

When I was in my late twenties, I was working as an office manager in Manhattan. On paper, I had it together. In reality? I was a mess of fear-based thinking that I’d been dragging around for years like a heavy suitcase I didn’t know how to put down.

I always knew my inner dialogue was brutal. The voice in my head told me I wasn’t smart enough, brave enough, talented enough to go after what I actually wanted. And I believed it. Every single day, I believed it.

I felt helpless to change it. I’d tried. Lord knows I’d tried. Every January, I’d make some version of the same resolution: “This year, I’ll finally go after what I want. This year, I’ll stop being so afraid.”

And every February, I’d be right back where I started, feeling worse about myself than before.

Then I started yoga.

Not as a resolution. Not as some grand declaration. I just walked into a studio one ordinary Tuesday because a coworker wouldn’t stop talking about it. And something shifted.

Here’s what I didn’t understand back then but understand now with crystal clarity: my transformation had nothing to do with “resolving” to be less fearful or “deciding” to try new things even when I was scared.

It was about showing up to yoga three times a week and working on my mindset, my inner dialogue, and my mind-body connection.

Week after week. Month after month.

Not glamorous. Not Instagram-worthy. Just me, on a mat, doing the work.

And slowly—so slowly I almost didn’t notice at first—things started to change. My posture changed. The way I held my body in the world shifted. I stood taller. I took up space differently. And then my confidence started to change too.

Around this time, I started to realize something that scared the hell out of me: I wanted a career that was far more creative than pushing papers and managing calendars. I wanted to cook. To create. To feed people.

So I quit my job and went to culinary school to become a chef.

The old me—the resolution-making, fear-driven me—never would have done that. But the me who had spent months consistently working on her inner world? She was ready.

That decision launched a whole new life: cooking in NYC restaurants, private cheffing for celebrities, writing over 20 books on health and wellness, and now working as a copywriter with amazing healers and experts in the functional and regenerative medicine space.

None of that came from a resolution. It came from consistency.

So let me break this down for you, because I want you to actually succeed:

Consistency comes from a plan—not a “resolution” about what you’re going to magically achieve. A real plan includes how you’re going to show up, what you’re going to do when life gets hard, and what you’re going to do when you inevitably fall off the wagon. (Because you will. We all do.)

Planning requires brutal self-awareness—looking at your blind spots, examining the limiting beliefs that have been running your life like an invisible operating system, being honest (really honest) about what you will and won’t do, and reworking how you spend your time.

This isn’t feel-good stuff. This is hard work. It requires tenacity. It might require a coach. It definitely requires doing some tough work around your mindset—the kind of work that makes you uncomfortable because it forces you to look at parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding.

But here’s what I know for certain: you can do this.

You don’t need another resolution. You don’t need more motivation. You don’t need to wait for January 1st or Monday morning or some mythical “right time.”

You need a plan. You need consistency. And you need to start—really start—doing the inner work that makes the outer change possible.

Stop getting in your own way. I believe in you. Now it’s time for you to believe in you too.