From the Hart
Putting pressure on yourself to change overnight is destined for failure, says Miranda Hart, who explains why, if she makes an adjustment, she’ll do it on any day apart from 1 January
Ahearty and happy New Year ahead to you, my lovely reader chum. Although I’ve vowed not to measure myself by any kind of standards in 2024, I’m very happy to celebrate little moments of joy along the way, and this is indeed one – becoming a columnist for Good Housekeeping magazine and chatting to you. For I do see these ‘columns’ as a little chat – on which note, a woodpecker just popped into my garden and is nibbling on my Fat Balls! I googled and it was a great spotted woodpecker no less, just bobbing about in west London. Another little joyful moment to notch into the memory bank. And that’s my simple resolution – to notice the good things and celebrate them, whether they’re mine or my loved ones’. The more I notice the good and joyful things, the more I end up aiming for them, wanting to find them and feeling free of any punishing standards resolutions can put on us.
I resolve to be resolutely resolute about no resolutions. (And I don’t care if that doesn’t make much literary sense, it’s a pleasing sentence!)
I used to be obsessed with making changes as a new year approached. If by the following February no resolutions had been achieved, I would give up and wait until 1 January to ‘start again’. This would be the year that I would be a new person. This year, I would exercise more, eat better, see more of my friends, learn to cook, host more, have more fun and simultaneously achieve more, buy a nice piece of furniture to make me feel grown-up, do more charity work and become some kind of perfect human. I would eat all the food in November and December because this January, this one, this was it; I would never eat a crisp or a piece of bread or pastry ever again. Some years, I threw away comfortable jeans because I hoped in a few months they would be too big, and I made unrealistic work deadlines, which I then had to awkwardly undo with employers down the line.
What on earth was I doing?! Would I have behaved like that to anyone I cared for? As if suddenly going from 31 December to 1 January would mean I could change my habits in an instant. It’s literally just the next day! And why the constant pressure to be anything other than I was? I had yet to notice and accept all the good that was around me, and the good bits of who I was. Because, when we step back from punishing goals, we are – in the main – good and doing our best and, when we’re struggling, it��
