Why I’m Skipping New Year’s Resolutions for a Word of the Year
By Alison Stolpa
I’m a recovering New Year’s hater. Sanctimony seemed baked into the holiday: if you weren’t atoning for past mistakes via self-flagellating New Year’s Resolutions, you were boasting about your incredible ability to eschew the overpriced parties and instead greet the sunrise doing hot yoga whilst contemplating how to become even more perfect in the year to come.
Slowly I’ve come around. Yes, you can have a fresh start (and, I’d like to point out, champagne!) at any time. But there’s something about the seasonal ritual, ceremony, and concerted desire to build the life of your dreams that does have undeniable power.
So, how do you harness the brief but glittering New Year’s zeitgeist to build a reality you love, without slipping into self-judgment after the inevitable New Year’s Resolution slip-ups or the vague, quickly forgotten “this is the year I finally…” promises?
I’ve been going with the simple, easy-to-remember Word of the Year. This is a word you choose as a guiding light while you’re making decisions, or a concept you want to embody.
For 2025, my word is “rest.”
The instant I chose it, I felt my always-in-overdrive brain get jittery.
“But how will we accomplish our millions of goals?” it said.
I get it, Brain. And that response is how I know I’ve chosen the right word.
The “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” mentality hasn’t gotten me where I want to be. It doesn’t actually help me check anything off my longer than humanly possible to-do list or to celebrate when I do. I suspect it’s just wasting my time as I attempt to self-soothe my way out of the feeling of failure I get every time I can’t check off twenty things a day.
“Rest,” I suspect, will give me the calm and capable foundation I need so I can actually hit, acknowledge, and enjoy the steps on the path to my dreams.
Maybe your Word of the Year will rattle you a bit, too. Or maybe it’ll feel like a gentle coming home. When it floats into your head and you feel it in your gut, you’ll know.
Alison Stolpa is a publicist, writer, and actor living in Los Angeles, CA. In her spare time, she can be found record shopping, reading, or hanging out with her two cats.
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