I Have Been Setting Resolutions Wrong.

Maybe You Have Been Too?

I am sitting with my journal tonight, my heart racing like I’ve already accomplished everything I’m about to write down. 2025 is here and I’m ready to believe it will be different. It’s almost endearing how the human brain resets its optimism annually.

Looking through my past journals, I see the pattern I’ve been trying to ignore. Each year, the same story plays out in unfinished goals and incomplete resolutions. They all chase the same thing: becoming more — more fit, more successful, more accomplished, more perfect. Always reaching for more.

It’s not that wanting more is wrong. But how can I have more when my foundation feels unstable? For ten years, I’ve carried my self-doubt across cities and countries. Living alone, I’ve known months of loneliness that settled into my bones. My thoughts have always felt too complex, too strangled to voice — my attention darting like a bird, never still enough to untangle these thoughts.

My house is in order. My career is in order. But my relationship with myself, with others — that’s where the mess lives. I’ve struggled to be vulnerable — to let people see past the calm exterior to where I’m burning hot like the coal. If you got too close, you’d feel that heat.

I realize now that I need to tend to my inner world first. To take care of my emotional health, to calm the storm inside, to build trust with the self I’ve been running from. To create space within and let everything else follow naturally.

Illustration by Harsh Darji

Here are my resolutions to become emotionally healthy in 2025:

1. I will be kinder to myself. I will speak to myself the way I speak to those I love. My imperfections are not errors to fix, they’re parts of my story.
2. I will stop being the cushion for everyone else’s comfort. My edges are not too sharp, my voice is not too loud, my feelings are not too much.
3. I will honor my ‘no’ without guilt. Every boundary I set is a promise to protect my peace. My needs are not negotiations.
4. I will pause to breathe and listen within. My inner world deserves the same attention
5. I give to my inbox and notifications. I will let my feelings flow through me. They’re not problems to solve or storms to weather — they’re simply part of being human.
6. I will trust my desires. None of them are wrong. Even the ones that make no sense, even the ones I’m afraid to voice.
7. I will release myself from outcomes. My job is to plant the seeds, not control how they grow.
8. I will watch my thoughts pass by like clouds in the sky. Some bring rain, some bring shade, none of them define me.
9. I will trust life’s timing. My path doesn’t need to match anyone else’s. What’s meant for me will always find me.
10. I will cherish connections that feel like home. Those rare souls who let me show up exactly as I am — messy, unfinished, still figuring it out. They make belonging feel possible.

These aren’t resolutions to become more perfect — they’re promises to become more real. To stop trying to outrun my own shadows and instead learn to sit with them. Perhaps real growth isn’t about adding layers but about peeling them away, about coming home to the self I’ve been too busy to know. This time, I’m not reaching for more. I’m reaching for deeper.

If these words felt like a friend sitting with you, sharing truths over late-night tea, I’d love to keep this conversation going. I write letters (the kind that feel like a deep breath) to fellow humans who are figuring it out as they go. No pressure, no hustle culture, just honest words about growing at our own pace.

If you’d like to a printable version of these resolutions join my newsletter and I will email you a copy.

With light & love,
Harsh Darji