Wellbeing: Scrap the New Year’s Resolutions and learn to love yourself

Cambridge-based life coach and mentor Hayley Scott Summers helps women to cultivate confidence. As 2024 nears, she encourages us to scrap the New Year’s resolutions and love ourselves just as we are

December has once again crept up on us with startling speed, threatening to leave a trail of glitter, Prosecco and more leftover turkey than any curry recipe could possibly accommodate.

With that in mind, it also means the moment of great expectation is almost here, when we boldly declare ‘new year, new me’ and profess a string of wildly unrealistic resolutions that will surely work this time. And it feels good. Exciting, positive, maybe even intriguing. What does this new you look like? How will she walk through the world? How will she conquer the day? She’s obviously slimmer, prettier, smarter, stronger, younger looking, more confident and competent. And as she is all of those things, she will also be happier too. . . right?

Can I share something with you?

This month I wanted to write something that would inspire and empower you to take aligned action towards your goals next year. I wanted to combine my 15 years’ business experience along with my coaching expertise to share all my best tips and tricks on how to bring your dreams to life. How to really make 2024 ‘your year’. I wanted it to be genuinely helpful and accessible to you, wherever you are on your journey.

And then I stumbled across a study published in Forbes Health suggesting that only 11 per cent of us will reach the one-month mark when it comes to sticking to New Year’s Resolutions, meaning the other 89 per cent would have ‘failed’.

And it got me thinking. Given how much pressure so many of us place upon ourselves this time of year (see the aforementioned and not so uncommon hypothetical ‘new year, new you’ list in paragraph one!) it’s really no mystery as to why the stats show such a high failure rate.

So, I’ve scrapped my original article, and instead I want to say this. Not as a business owner, or even as a coach. But as someone who’s life was inextricably changed for the better not when they achieved the goal or reached the target or stuck to the resolution, but as someone who learnt the most powerful intention you could possible ever set for yourself:

Love yourself.

Love yourself so hard that you make healthy choices for yourself, physically, financially, and emotionally.

Love yourself as you are. Love the parts of you that you’ve never loved before and love the parts that you’ve kept hidden (bingo wings an’ all).

Love yourself so deeply that your own wellbeing is a priority, not a mere afterthought.

Love yourself for where you’re at on your journey, and love yourself for how far you’ve come. Love yourself for the failures and love yourself for the wins.

Love yourself for all the things that make you ‘you’, the parts of you that have been forgotten, buried under the commitments of day-to -day life and ‘to do’ lists. Love yourself so much that you remember who you are, and just how remarkable you really are

I promise that you don’t need to be a new version of you, not this year or any other year. Because, there is no-one else in the whole world who’s lived the life you’ve lived, that can do what you do, the way in which you do it. This alone is cause for celebration. So, if you make any resolution this year, make it this; love yourself!

Find out more about Hayley at hayleyscottsummers.com or follow her on socials @hayleyscottsummers