We're baaaack! I'm coming to you fresh in 2025 from Charleston, my potentially final stop on the "where is Samantha going to live next" (if you missed this story, there's a little more context in this video). I'm also sending love to anybody affected by the LA fires - it's been heartbreaking to watch so I know it's 100x more devastating for those affected). If you're feeling overwhelmed by what's going on, feel free to snooze this email and come back to it later - your mental health matters and everything else can wait.

For everybody else, there is a topic that's obvious to me as what must be talked about. It's basically the elephant in the room this time of year - resolutions.

Whether you buy into the New Year's Resolutions game or, like me, prefer more classic goal setting this time of year (or none of the above), there can be a lot of muscling in January to try to force a new version of yourself. I love the impulse because the desire for growth and development is a fundamental human trait but especially among my community of high achievers, eldest daughters and people pleasers, this can very quickly descend into "I'm not good enough as I am so I need to be better."

Here's what to look for to suggest that your resolutions or goals for 2025 might be counter-productive:

You came up with them from a place of critiquing the things you don't like about yourself ("I'm so lazy - this year I have to start that side hustle" or "I hate the way I look in the mirror - I'm going to work out twice a week this year") - when we start from a place of negative self-talk, even when we're doing the good thing (exercise, work, journaling, etc.) we're still subtly reinforcing the bad belief about ourselves. It also makes you significantly less resilient when you inevitably slip up because you'll immediately go back to "see, I'm always going to be lazy/insecure/etc."

You're motivating yourself to work toward these goals out of an idea of how the outside world will react to you when you succeed ("When I lose 5 pounds, more guys will find me attractive" or "When I set more boundaries, my mom will stop picking fights with me") - we do not control other people and when we start to try to change how other people react to us by changing ourselves, we set ourselves up for major disappointment because you might do everything "right" and still nothing changes.

Your resolutions or goals are vague or very general like "work out more" or "be more confident" - when we're vague, it's exceedingly difficult to tell whether you achieved it or not because if you do start to make progress, you'll naturally adjust the goal posts.

So what should you do instead?

If you are realizing that any of your 2025 goals/resolutions are guilty of any of the above, here are some simple reminders to check in and potentially reset - 10 days into the New Year is not too late to adjust and tweak for more success for the rest of 2025:

1. Set goals from a place of desire rather than shortcoming - "I would be so proud of myself if I went on two dates each month" is so much more effective than "I hate being single - I have to go on two dates a month"
2. Frame new habits as care rather than punishment - "I want to take care of my body with at least two exercise sessions a week" feels so much better than "I need to lose 5 pounds so I'm going to exercise twice a week"
3. Set numerical goals, time frames and rewards - which sounds more motivating: "I'm going to post regularly on Instagram," "I'm going to post 3x a week for 12 weeks" or "I'm going to post 3x a week for 12 weeks and if I don't miss a week, I get a massage as a reward"? Our brains love rewards and concrete tasks it can notice progress towards
4. Anchor the new behavior to an identity - we are far more likely to stick with behaviors that fit within our identity (shoutout to James Clear's Atomic Habits for a beautiful explanation of this) so reinforcing "I'm a healthy person" even as your still trying to stick to your exercise habit will be more effective than "I'm trying to get healthy." On the day you're about to no show your workout class, which of those two statements is more likely to get you to go? Saying you'll "try" implies you might fail, whereas reinforcing your goal identity can often push you over the edge to follow through.

I did a whole goal setting session with my girlfriends around New Years - are you curious how we do it and why I think goal setting in a group is extra valuable? If so, shoot me a reply with the word GOALS and I'll build a whole article about it for you!

Samantha