You scan the gym. It’s 6:37 am on a Monday, and the place is bursting like a colony of insects hard at work tending to their home. Bodies moving. Water bottles everywhere. Everyone looks like they know exactly what they’re doing.

The New Year shows up like a shiny, clean slate no one asked for, but everyone feels pressured to use it. Maybe it’s the new shirt you gave yourself for Christmas, or the socks that make you feel like you’re walking into a better version of your life.

Yesterday, you bought a new calendar. You told yourself you’d have chia seed smoothies. You booked a study room for Wednesday. You stocked the fridge with a medley of rainbow vegetables. This morning, you ordered a one-gallon Stanley cup.

Your stomach grumbles as you approach the treadmill. The idea of a twelve percent incline makes your legs ache before you’ve even started. But… It’s the New Year. It’s 2026. And this is the year you get it right.

You even committed to doing the 75 Hard—a challenge where you, for seventy-five consecutive days, workout twice a day, drink a gallon of water, eat clean, read, with zero days off.

You’re on day six.

The treadmill beeps. Incline up. Your legs scream. Your stomach whines. This is your reinvention, and it looks like it’s everyone else’s too.

Someone dry-scoops pre-workout in the corner. A girl adjusts her brand-new sneakers. A guy is carrying a three-litre water jug like a personality trait. Your phone lights up. Your Canva vision board: abs, bigger butts than yours, people hiking with scary smiles, journaling, cooking, thriving.

“The Gym,” a stage play.

Why do we feel the need to assume a new role when entering from stage right? Psychologists call this a form of hyperbolic discounting or overcommitment. We try to bite off more than we can chew, and that’s because we romanticize the future version of ourselves.

We see ourselves as more ambitious, driven, and disciplined in all facets of our lives.

When we set New Year’s resolutions, they feed into the idealized future selves we see. Often, the goals aren’t small, achievable steps either. They can be massive identity shifts and projects.

The wave of ambition creates unmanageable routines which are built on a foundation of feathers. The designs of these goals make failure not only shameful, but as though we failed the new identity we are trying to build when we don’t accomplish them.

There’s a reason January feels heavier than other months, and it’s not just personal. Psychologists refer to this as the “Fresh Start Effect,” a term coined by researchers Dai, Milkman, and Riis in 2014, which shows that people are more likely to set unrealistic, high-pressure goals around temporal landmarks like January 1, birthdays, or Mondays.

When we cross a “time border,” our brains trick us into believing we can sever our present selves from our past selves. We think, New Year, new identity. But the brain doesn’t make that clean separation. Instead of sustainable change, we create a performance version of growth.

We don’t change, we curate.

And nowhere is that more visible than on campus. At VIU, the first two weeks of the semester are what I call the “January Renaissance”. The gym is overflowing. Study rooms are booked solid.

Everyone has a water bottle. New planners. New outfits. New mindsets. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. It actually feels good.

But it isn’t sustainable, because it’s not built for reality. It’s not discipline, it’s performance wearing the mask of discipline. It feels like a mandated season of becoming, where stillness is treated like failure and transformation feels compulsory.

January is not just psychological; it is profitable. Companies have built entire business models around the idea that we yearn to reinvent ourselves right after the holidays.

Gyms roll out their biggest promotions of the year. Skincare brands release “reset” kits. Grocery stores highlight detox teas and low-calorie swaps. Bookstores push self-help to the front tables. And it works because it feels urgent.

The turn of the calendar into the New Year triggers an insurgence of self-improvement impulses, and research proves it. One study found that people are subtly primed to purchase self-improvement products when the New Year begins to approach.

Another examined household food purchases documented a clear ‘reset’ in January, with homes having healthier foods, but as the months go by, those purchases begin declining.

These findings boost the idea that January can be a giant psychological reset button, where people make intentional purchases for self-improvement and health.

A former liquor store employee told me that January and February are not just slow, but predictably so. They explained that staff, stock, and hours are planned around the assumption that people will “go sober” for a month and then begin drinking again. It isn’t a guess; it’s built into the business model.

Liquor stores, they explained, prepare for December and New Year’s as their peak season, anticipate January and February as a dip due to resolutions and Dry February, and then expect customers to return in March once those habits fade.

This failure is calculated and purposely marketed. This is not because people are weak. It’s because we are human.

Out of curiosity, I ran my own small, deeply unscientific social experiment. I asked people how long their New Year’s goals lasted. Nearly half said about a month. A third said barely a week. Less than a quarter said they stick to them.

When asked how January made them feel, most said that they didn’t feel motivated or calm. Most said it’s a combination of feeling motivated and overwhelmed.

When I asked what they felt most pressured to figure out, the answers weren’t shallow. People talked about finances, finding a job, creating a system to “guarantee” success, and planning entire futures.

In a time like this, where tuition rises, rent climbs, and part-time work barely covers groceries, the pressure to ‘get ahead’ starts to inch into the ‘survival’ category. It’s challenging to be a better version of ourselves when we’re just trying to afford groceries and pass next week’s exam.

These aren’t superficial goals. We aren’t trying to be perfect. We’re trying not to fall behind.

And this is the core of true motivation, the essence that the performance culture misses. Simon Sinek, a leadership expert, advocates that great movements and lasting change always “Start With Why.”

The performative results and goals of a toned core, chia seed drinks, or reading a novel, are the What.

But the real driving factors of passing exams or affording tuition are the marrow of the Why.

When we try to design new routines based on What, it collapses. When we adopt small daily actions tied to the foundational Why, it has the anchoring to stick. But the marketplace doesn’t profit from small, actionable goals; it profits from failure.

According to a 2024 survey by Forbes Health and OnePoll, only eight percent of respondents said their past New Year’s resolutions lasted more than a month. That statistic does not point to failure or laziness; it points to design. The system depends on the other 92 percent. It has a dependency on us thinking and believing we’re the problem, so we’ll continue to buy their solutions.

This is where distinguishing between systems and goals becomes prevalent. With the New Year, people feel a mix of being overwhelmed, motivated and pressured to reinvent themselves. Yet, many, including myself, struggle to know what a working system looks and feels like.

A goal is the desired result we want, and a system is the simple, repeatable process that gets us to that result.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, asserts, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

When we make large goals in January–often identity-based desires–we prioritize the goal over making simple resolutions to the processes that get us there. We neglect small, sustainable daily changes required for actual and habitual lifelong changes.

We are taught to make big promises in January and blame ourselves when our nervous system can’t uphold perfect routines. Social media sharpens this blade. Our algorithms flood us with unrealistic morning routines, productivity vlogs, perfectly timed meals, “hot girl walks,” and aesthetic discipline to synthesize the “better you.”

You scroll through your phone, and everyone looks like they’ve figured it out—flat stomachs, steaming coffee with backdrops of sunlit windows, and colourful, packed meals. You don’t think they’re trying their best. You think, what’s wrong with me?

The brain reads this as reality. But it’s wrong.

And then a Wednesday morning shows up, and you’re late. You stayed up last night to finish that Reddit discussion post, snoozed your alarm this morning, and now your bones feel as though they weigh ten pounds, your head is aching, and you forgot to meal-prep your breakfast bowl.

In the corner, your gym bag is waiting. As the sun filters through your home, it mocks you for sleeping in and being behind.

It isn’t loud, no one’s screaming at you, it isn’t dramatic. Instead, it’s quiet. It’s just you standing in an empty kitchen, wondering how everyone else makes this look so easy.

Research shows that frequent exposure to idealized social-media content correlates with increased body dissatisfaction and lower self-esteem, making it easier for missed workouts or failed goals to feel like personal failures. So, when you miss a workout, your brain doesn’t say, that’s okay. It says, you blew it. This isn’t a personal flaw. It’s a designed emotional outcome.

This is the cultural lie of January: growth only counts if it’s visible, progress only matters if it’s aesthetic, and health only counts if it photographs well. So, when your calendar goes blank, when your meal prep falls apart, and when your gym bag sits untouched, you don’t feel human. You feel defective. But you’re not broken. You were just sold a fantasy.

So, what if we didn’t perform this year? What if your New Year’s resolution wasn’t optimized? What if it was silly, light, or gentle? I asked people one last question: what is a soft, silly, cozy thing you’d love to try this year?

The answers were actionable and curious. People talked about learning how to cook eggs in different ways, switching from coffee to tea, learning to knit, painting their toenails every week, trying to ski for the first time, and making homemade tea.

There was no pressure. No aesthetic. No productivity. Just curiosity, softness, and joy.

Your resolution doesn’t need to be ambitious. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be a transformation. Instead of trying to implement these life-changing systems that demand a new you, try building for a one percent improvement, a principle by James Clear.

That one percent could be as simple as reading one page in a book, drinking a glass of water, or making your bed in the morning.

Maybe this year, instead of trying to become a better version of yourself, you can try being a gentler one.