Every December, like clockwork, my phone explodes with the annual flurry of posts: "New year, new me!" they trumpet. Friends sign up for 5 a.m. boot camps, vow to start ice plunging 7 days a week braving sub-human temperatures, or pledge to meditate for an hour every single morning after a 16-hour fast. If you ask me, it’s less a fresh start and more a burnout recipe in disguise.
Don’t get me wrong—I love self-improvement. But I wonder whether the relentless pressure to reinvent ourselves every January is doing more harm than good. The big, bold resolutions feel… stressful. And stress, ironically, is the very thing most of us hope to combat in the new year.
