January Is Not the Time to Grow

Bare trees in a forest under a cloudy sky with dead trees on the ground.

According to nature, New Year's Day is decidedly not the time to start rising before dawn, doing three sets of jump squats, and beginning the day with wet hair.

I’m not the first person to discover this concept. Everyone knows bears hibernate. The Ingalls family makes it through The Long Winter by eating plum preserves and salted meat they stocked away in the fall. Are we so different from bears? Or Laura Ingalls?

In North America, January 1 is a mere ten days into winter. We are tricked into thinking winter ends December 31, because it appeared to start at the end of September when Hobby Lobby put out their Christmas stuff. But no, that was fall. We’re confused about fall because that appeared to start back in July when Target put out their sweaters.

In fact, we can trace this all the way back to January 1 last year, when Target put out their swimsuits and we immediately panicked about our soft, pale, post-holiday bodies.

Stores don’t care about phenological seasons, but our bodies still respond to the earth's natural rhythms. Ask any midwife about the disproportionately high number of babies she delivers during full moons.  

When it comes down to it, we are animals. What do animals do in winter? Hibernate. Prepare. Go dormant. Slow down. Sleep. Adapt for survival by growing a winter coat, changing color, keeping their heads down, and eating lots of extra dense food. Like apple cider muffins.

There’s another word for what animals do in winter: diapause. They pause their development.

Maybe we can pause our development, too.

It's not backsliding or laziness. It’s not the sum of who you are. It’s just something your body does because it is playing the long game.

Give yourself six weeks. Maybe twelve. You can revisit everything in March, when we have more than eight hours of sunlight and your kids haven’t just been spoiled by their grandparents for two weeks straight.

I’m not saying we should literally be like bears, lying in caves getting fatter and fatter. We still have to do our normal things: go to work, go to school, feed our families. Animals never get a day off from survival.

But we can release ourselves from the pressure to do everything bigger and better and fresher. There’s no need to punish ourselves for the decadence of the holidays. We can gradually ease into more balanced norms.

By all means, throw away the reindeer-shaped hot cocoa bombs. But you don’t have to cut out all sugar immediately.

By all means, set some goals. But you don’t have to list out all the ways you’re falling short as a person and swear to fix them this year.

When it’s time, when you’re ready, make the change you know you need to make, not the change you committed to because your friend was doing it and you didn’t want to be left behind.

It’s boring even to say this, but small, gradual changes are the ones that stick.

Start with changes that you have the infrastructure in place to maintain. If you don’t have the infrastructure in place, start with that.

In the fall, I knew I needed to take away my kids’ devices at bedtime. If we’re being really honest, I knew I needed to take away my device at bedtime. The blue light, the constant temptation to check for notifications…I had a lot of reasons, but I felt intimidated to actually do it.

So first, I laid some groundwork. I bought an alarm clock to practice waking up without my phone alarm. I weaned myself off my guided meditations. I warned my teenage son about the impending doom.

(I should note here that I am not a high-output person. I’ve had friends start entire businesses while I debated the pros and cons of buying new running shoes. Feel free to move faster than me.)

Then I did it. There was significant resistance. I second-guessed myself (“Is it really that big of a deal if they listen to music to fall asleep?”). Everyone was late to school one day because I set my stupid little alarm clock for p.m. instead of a.m. One child, who shall remain nameless, found an old iPad and started sneaking it at night after the phones were taken up.

But I made the change, and it has been good. I don’t have to worry that my kids are online doing weird stuff when they’re supposed to be sleeping (the seditious iPad has since been confiscated). I have a minute to feel grateful for my warm body and my soft bed and the start of a new day before I look at my to-do list. I know Jonathan Haidt is somewhere, smiling down at me proudly.

I don’t even remember when this was. Maybe early November? Doesn’t matter.

In Hawaii, like other equatorial climates, there are no meaningful seasons, and thus there are no goals. People live in a perpetual state of chill. They are relaxed and happy, but they never clean out their garages. A checkpoint in the year can be nice. If January 1, or the Lunar New Year, or a new school year gives you the motivation to evaluate your life and make needed adjustments, don’t let me take that away from you.

I feel bad about how northern-hemisphere-biased this piece is. In fact, I feel bad about how northern-hemisphere-biased our cultural touchpoints are in general. Is Santa Claus really that meaningful to kids who live closer to the South Pole than the North? What did slaves in South Africa follow to get to freedom?

(Did you know you can’t see the North Star in the southern hemisphere??)

You might be comforted, as was I, to learn that ninety percent of the earth’s population--6.6 billion people--live in the northern hemisphere. The 850 million people living below the equator surely understand that when it comes to which seasons and stars are mainstream, the majority must rule.

Whichever hemisphere you live in, New Year’s Day is not a good time for sweeping self-improvement. In Australia, January 1 is the middle of summer. It’s hot and languid, the time to stay near water and feed your kids unlimited popsicles. (They do have popsicles in Australia, but they call them “ice blocks” and they don’t have Red 40.)

I just know that for the ninety percent of us living in places where the pressure to develop ourselves reaches its zenith during the grayest, coldest, bleakest part of the year, I need an alternative message. Maybe you do too.

Survive. Sleep. Adapt. Set some intention, lay some groundwork, but don’t poke your tender green shoot above the ground when there are still hard freezes ahead. Spring will come. It always does. You can buy planners on Amazon any time of year. After all, stores don’t care about seasons.