Why January 1st Feels Heavy (And Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work)

Podcast Transcript

Hey my friend, if you’re listening to this in real time, you are listening on January 1st, 2026. And so the first thing that I want to say is Happy New Year.

One of the things that I think most women that I talk to are afraid to admit is how this day can bring quiet dread. How this day can bring so much pressure, how this day can bring the sense of I should feel more hopeful than I actually do.

So if today feels heavy, flat, or strangely emotional, I want you to know there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re human. It’s okay, and it makes sense.

The truth about January 1st, the truth about the beginning of the year, the truth about how society shows up is that it activates comparison. We see ourselves comparing ourselves.

We see ourselves. We are comparing ourselves to what other people are putting out in the world, to the social media, to the pictures they post, the videos they post, but also to the resolutions that they’ve chosen, the things that they’ve decided to do, and the noise gets heavy, the noise gets loud.

It also activates self-assessment.

So we find ourselves looking at ourselves going, what have I done that actually has value this year? What results have I created and what results haven’t I created in my life? What results haven’t I created?

It activates the part of the nervous system that’s trained to look for what’s missing. And what you need to know is that this isn’t a mindset issue so much as it’s conditioning.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that we need to do this a certain way.

What I also will offer is what I see is a lot of people accessing an all or nothing approach either: the new year is the most amazing thing ever, and we’re gonna have all these incredible resolutions.

Or: I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions and I’m not gonna do anything and I’m just going to ride out the negative emotion that I’m feeling and wait for this to go away.

And that’s what I really notice is that we have this all or nothing approach when it comes to the new year.

There’s also underlying all of this, a belief that we need to always be changing how we are… but oftentimes from a very, what I would say, very performative place. It comes from a performative place. We are performing for others.

If you think about even just weight loss or, you know, getting toned or showing your six pack or whatever it is, you know, we are gonna see so much of that over the next couple of weeks.

Right. Why post your six pack on social media? Why are we posting our weight progression on social media?

Oftentimes it’s because we view it as performative, and what we don’t realize is that riding underneath it is a desire to be liked, to be loved, to be told that we’re good enough.

And this is what I really see, is that we have this way of being in the world, the way that we approach the new year, that is extremely performative.

Even when people will say to me, “Oh, I’m doing dry January.” Or what is the other one that people do? Uh, what’s it called? It’s called like… dang, I wish I could remember. It’s like something 30.

When they do that, right, having to tell me that this is what they’re doing in a way that makes you question whether or not you are doing it wrong… or that you should have a resolution… or that you should be working towards eating better, losing weight, getting more muscle…

Or I should be focused on that next amazing relationship. Or I should be ensuring that I’m making enough money to get the things that I want in my life.

Noticing that what I see in January, especially on this day, is the shoulds. All the shoulds start popping up.

I should be doing my life differently. I should be trying to do things differently. I should be able to do this in this way.

And I just think that anytime we’re using the word should, we’ve gotta recognize that it’s not great fuel. And the reason why is ultimately because of what it does.

I really don’t believe in resolutions, and this isn’t a rant. This is actually—I don’t believe in resolutions because I wanna protect you.

I believe that resolutions often come from shame. So they are coming from a place of: I am feeling ashamed about how I look, how I navigate the world, how I cope… and that I am going to do these things so that I don’t have this problem anymore.

So I’m going to use shame as the fuel to drive the change because I’m so ashamed of what I do here.

And what they really end up doing when we look at a resolution, like let’s say I’m going to quit smoking, is their attempts to regulate discomfort by controlling behavior.

What I tend to see is somebody deciding that they’re gonna do something… but the fuel is: I’m embarrassed of how I do this.

And this is just a disgusting habit if we’re talking about smoking… or you know, I need to not be drinking so much ’cause I need to lose weight and I don’t like how I feel when I drink… and I wanna lose weight so that I can like how I look in photos…

It all sounds really good. It all sounds like such a good idea—except that it’s all driven by shame. All of it. Every single piece of that is driven by shame.

And I like to look at it from a different perspective. I like to look at it from a different frame of mind.

I look at this and go: what if you are not the problem here?

It’s not that you are so undisciplined and that’s why you drink or you smoke or you eat. That’s not what’s really going on here.

But actually when you smoke, when you drink, when you eat, when you fall into old patterns, when you go back to what was kind of not working but kind of working in the past—that is because of how dysregulated you are.

That is because of having an inability to allow and process emotion in any way that feels doable.

That is you not having the capacity for the emotional experience that is showing up because your nervous system hasn’t been cared for… because you haven’t been taught how to navigate emotion… because you don’t know how to change the way that you think—and that is the core of the problems.

So to me, like the smoking, the drinking, the overeating, the people pleasing, the controlling behavior, the whatever it is that you don’t like about yourself—when that becomes the resolution, then what happens is we are trying to control a symptom, but we haven’t actually controlled the root issue.

And to me this is very problematic because what ends up happening is we end up using willpower to try and change.

We’re using willpower to get where we wanna go, and willpower will not last. Willpower only is going to come on your strongest days, and on your weakest days, willpower will fail you—only 100% of the time. Okay? Willpower will fail you, but only 100% of the time.

So I really like to look at finding ways to navigate through what’s happening and frame it in a way that allows us to create more of what we want from a heart-centered place.

You know, I was just coaching in my membership and we were coaching on dating for a few of the members… and what got told to me, and this has been told to me so many times, is that dating is a lot of work.

Dating is a lot of work. We put a lot of effort in and we don’t even know if it’s gonna work out. The dating pool is so awful. There’s no good partners out there. The apps are just full of garbage, people lie, et cetera, et cetera.

And this is what people believe about dating: this is what it looks like and therefore we’re not safe to date.

And if I were to say to you, “Okay, well Susie, you wanna have a partner, so we’re just gonna figure out how to tolerate dating so that we can get to the end of dating and you can find a partner,” you might say yes to that.

And I think a New Year’s resolution looks a lot like that—like: let’s tolerate this garbage can that we’ve decided to put ourselves in so that we can try and grind out the results.

And I just hate that for you. I hate that for you. For me, I think it’s unnecessary… and even worse yet, I think it’s very ineffective.

It’s why diets don’t work. It’s why people will be on and off the dating apps, on and off dating, dating lackluster people, having shitty experiences… It’s why we’ll end up in jobs that we don’t want.

This is how this all comes to be, and we’ve got to be able to reframe how we think about it. We have to be able to reframe how we approach it.

In order to reframe how we approach it, we have to change how we think about it. It’s just required.

Reframes to Try Instead

So instead of saying, “Who do I need to become this year?” I would offer: “What would make me feel a little safer this year?”

Notice the difference. “Who do I need to become” is such a big question and it’s so difficult—and it sounds like I have to become somebody completely different.

Versus “What would make me feel a little safer this year” allows you the opportunity to start discovering what are the things that would need to happen for you to be able to show up in a different way.

What would you need to think about yourself? What would you need to think about other people? What would you need to think about the process in general? What would you need to believe?

And this isn’t always just mindset. Sometimes what I need to believe is that I can press the stop button whenever I want.

So one of the women that I was coaching in the membership, we were talking about dating… and how there can be times when you know this person is not the right person.

So how can you feel safe in saying no? How can you feel safe in rejecting somebody? How can you feel safe in your ability to go on a date and know right away whether or not this is the right person?

Also, I think that we can create safety circumstantially. Like if we wanna be really careful on a first date, we could potentially do it only in a group setting. It could be that we’re meeting and we’re going for a walk. We’re not sitting down at a restaurant.

There’s a lot of different things that we can do circumstantially to create safety.

But if you think about it from the standpoint of “What would make me feel a little safer this year” this allows you to go about this in a different way.

We don’t have that all-or-nothing approach… and that I have to do it all in or all out, and there’s no middle.

We don’t wanna approach our life that way because it’s not doable, it’s not sustainable.

And for the people that listen to this podcast, 99% of the time, we’re dealing with a lack of self-trust.

We don’t trust ourselves to be able to do the right things. We don’t trust ourselves to be able to navigate other people. We don’t trust ourselves to be able to experience something difficult and keep going.

So the other reframe that we can look at is: instead of “What will I finally fix?”… ask: “What do I want more of emotionally, energetically, and relationally?”

Now, when you think about “What will I finally fix?” think about it like this: what will I stop doing?

Are you gonna stop eating late at night? Are you gonna stop binging food? Are you gonna stop drinking? Are you gonna stop smoking? Are you gonna stop people pleasing?

These sound useful. They sound like really good New Year’s resolutions.

But if you look at it from the standpoint of what do I want more of emotionally—if you are getting your emotional needs met, you are going to not want to smoke as much.

If you are getting your emotional needs met, you’re not gonna want to escape.

And this is what we’re typically doing when we’re engaging in a lot of these behaviors. It’s escape.

So if we can start looking at: what do I want more of emotionally, energetically, relationally—this opens up a window.

It allows us the opportunity to explore: how can I create more of the emotions that I want this year?

If we can start creating more of the emotions that we want, we are going to feel less dysregulated.

Our nervous system isn’t gonna show up and try to defend us from whatever we’ve determined is a fear problem, and instead, we can really just be in a more emotionally stable frame of mind.

And when we’re in a more emotionally stable frame of mind, we can make better choices. We can make better decisions.

And the symptom of smoking, the symptom of drinking, the symptom of overeating—whatever it is—you will be able to approach that from a calm place and from a grounded place.

And you’ll be able to make the decision from the standpoint of: I’m taking really good care of myself and I can get through this.

Why I Don’t Love “SMART Goals”

I really don’t love having any of my clients move through a goal setting exercise. I actually really hate the way that society does goals.

The idea of doing a SMART goal just makes me crazy.

I remember sitting down and doing them at school and doing them at work. Specific. Measurable. Actionable. Realistic. Timely.

And I’m like—what realistic goals? To me, I just think: how do you know they’re realistic?

I mean, the only things that we think are realistic are the things that we’ve already done.

So if we’re trying to set a goal for something that we’ve never done before, having it be a realistic goal… to me, it’s just like—impossible. That’s not even a real thing.

I don’t have a problem with setting goals… but for most of you listening to this podcast, what I wanna offer is something a little different on January 1st.

When we think about taking down the pressure, when we think about finding a kinder way to move through…

I look at it as like your life is a stream and it’s just flowing downhill. And what we wanna do is we wanna make that stream flow as much as possible because then we get to get to the next place sooner.

So we don’t wanna put a bunch of pressure because the pressure will actually close up the stream. We wanna keep the stream open.

I don’t think you need worksheets. I don’t think you need a big vision.

What I do think is: you could consider a word. You could consider something like a word that feels regulating.

For me, I have really chosen things—words, qualities—that I wanna practice, not that I wanna achieve.

Not that, “Oh, at the end I’ll have done this all the time,” but simply things that I wanna practice because I know what they will do for me. I know how they will help me.

And at the end of the day, that’s what is going to move you the farthest. That is what is going to move you the quickest. It’s just going to be the most effective.

Self-Concept + A Question to Return To

I sent an email to my list the other day, and if you’re not on my email list, you should be.

If you go to my website, amandahess.ca, you can sign up for… I think it’s called the overthinking… what is it called? Cure overthinking or something like that.

But you can go sign up for that and you’ll get on my list and you’ll get my emails.

In this email I was promoting the podcast that I did before this one. And if you haven’t listened to it, you should go listen to it: Episode 293: You are not who you think you are — how to change your self concept.

But in this email I talked about my self-concept and I wanna share it with you because I think it could be helpful.

My self-concept this year is this:

Emotionally powerful. Internally validated. Loved always.

This is my self-concept, but these are the qualities that I’m leaning into this year. These are the qualities that I’m using. These are what I am practicing.

Every time I move into any kind of circumstance in my life, this is what I’m going to use.

You could also ask yourself a question that you’re going to return to all year.

An example would be: What makes me come back to myself?

That could be a question that you ask yourself once a week. Once a day. Whatever works for you.

What helps me come back to myself—and not panicking when you don’t know the answer. We can figure out the answer if we keep asking the question.

Your brain is powerful. Your brain can do this. Your brain can figure this out.

Self-concept work and January 1st work, to me, they work hand in hand—and we wanna be able to start using that. It’s so effective.

Work With Me

If that’s interesting to you, you should come join us in the membership because I’m actually going to be teaching an entire class on self-concept.

If you come into the membership, you can come to that class for free. All you have to do is go to joinamanda.ca to sign up for a free week in my membership where you can come to the class, come to a coaching call, and experience this in real time.

What I need you to know about January 1st, 2026, is that you don’t have to know where this year is going yet.

You don’t need to know where it’s going. You just have to be willing to stay with yourself while it unfolds.

Ultimately, we’re learning the skill of trusting ourselves—trusting that we know what we need, trusting that we can handle what is brought up, trusting that we can lean in.

When you know how to regulate your nervous system, when you know how to process emotion, when you know how to change the way that you think—your life becomes exceptional.

Your life becomes exceptional, not because of the performative aspect of it, of how other people see it, but your life becomes exceptional because you feel comfortable being yourself.

What if your resolution this year was simply to love yourself and be more you?

How does that land in your body? How does that feel? How does that sit?

I want to invite you to take this on as your own.

But as always, I want you to know that you can book a discovery session with me.

If you go to amandahess.ca/bookacall, you can book a discovery session. We can get on a call and we can talk about what’s going on with you now.

The really great news is that I have some room in my private one-to-one coaching right now.

So for those of you that are ready to start 2026 and just really feel calm, grounded, good—be open to experiencing emotions like joy—this is an amazing opportunity for you to be able to do that.

And it would be my honor to get on that call with you and talk it through. We could talk this week.

Alright, my friend, this is what I’ve got for you. I hope you have the most incredible day today.

I can’t wait to keep talking to you here in 2026. I’ll see you here next time. Bye for now.