Making Better New Year Resolutions Ft. Zara Maqbool

This one is just me sitting down with Zara Maqbool, a psychotherapist who has been on the podcast before, and the conversation we had felt so timely even though the new year has already started. We talk about the psychology behind new year’s resolutions, why they often leave us feeling worse about ourselves, and what we can do instead. It is an honest look at the inner critic, the fantasy of a clean slate, and the quiet power of simply accepting where you are right now.

The fantasy of the reset button

Zara and I start by unpacking why we even make resolutions in the first place. She points out that for many of us, it is an intergenerational thing. “We just swallowed them without chewing them,” she says. We watched our parents make them, and we carried on the tradition without really questioning it. But there is something deeper too. As human beings, we have an innate desire to change. We want to grow, to be better, to move forward. The new year feels like a reset button, a chance to wipe the slate clean.

But that fantasy of a clean slate, Zara explains, is often rooted in a very critical voice inside us. A voice that says you should be losing weight, you should be working harder, you should be doing more. It is the internalized voice of a critical parent or a judgmental society. “There is a parental voice that says you should be doing that and you should be losing weight and you should be wearing more makeup,” she says. That voice is familiar to so many of us. And the new year resolution feeds that critic, giving it a fresh checklist to hold over our heads.

You cannot change unless you accept where you are

This is the paradox Zara lays out so clearly. We want to change, but real change cannot happen unless we first accept where we are. When we make resolutions from a place of shame, we are telling ourselves that we are not okay as we are. The inner critic says shame on you, now fix yourself. But that approach is counterproductive. It creates so much pressure that we set ourselves up to fail.

Zara explains that this absolute thinking is part of the problem. We tell ourselves I will never do that again or I will always stick to this. But life does not work in absolutes. “You will fall down, and that is because you are a human,” she reminds us. There is no room for forgiveness in that rigid mindset. A more effective way to create change is to start from a place of self-acceptance. Understand point A before you try to sprint to point B. If you are stuck with your goals, maybe it is because you have not yet become the person who can achieve them, and that is okay. First, you need to know who you are.

Reflection over resolution

Instead of only looking forward with a list of demands, Zara suggests we use the new year as a time for reflection. Look back at the year you have just lived and honor it. Honor the effort it took to get out of bed on hard days. Honor the small moments you showed up. “Don’t just look at it through the lens of your failures,” she says. When we are so fixated on what we did not achieve, we completely miss what life actually gave us.

I shared something from my own life during this conversation. Post-2020, my self-worth was really impacted by a series of things that happened. I struggled with why things were not happening for me the way they used to. And very recently, I realized the one thing I needed to work on was acceptance and self-worth. The moment I started honoring myself, everything shifted. It was not that I suddenly started achieving more. I just started loving my life again. And I noticed the kind of people and opportunities that started walking towards me changed too.

The language we use matters

A big part of this shift is the language we use with ourselves. Zara talks about how often clients come to therapy and say, “I want to fix myself.” Her response always stops them. “We only fix problems,” she tells them. “Are you saying you are a problem?” We are not problems to be fixed. We are people on a journey, and a beautiful journey does not mean all roses and rainbows. Pain has a lot of beauty and power in it too.

We need to challenge the inner critic’s vocabulary. Words like always, never, should, and must are red flags. Instead, Zara suggests a softer conversation with yourself. Sure, have goals. Make a plan. But then tell yourself, I will do the best that I can, and my best cannot be the best every single day. Some days you will feel overwhelmed. Some days you will not tap into your full potential. That is part of being human.

Honoring the small moments

Zara leaves us with a word that really landed for me: honor. She talks about honoring the small wins. If you are trying to cut down on sugar and you choose not to have that gulab jamun, honor that moment. Hats off to you. We are so conditioned to believe we only deserve to be honored once we reach some big, distant goal. But it is the daily, tiny choices that deserve recognition.

I found myself doing this in real time during our recording. I had been multitasking wildly, settling my little one, writing a check, training after this. And I paused and felt proud of myself for sitting there, disconnecting from everything, and really enjoying the conversation. I honored myself in that moment, and it felt so much lighter than any resolution ever has.

A different kind of resolution

If you take one thing from this conversation, let it be this. You can still have goals. You can still feel that new year motivation. But wrap it in kindness. Make your resolution about accepting yourself, about being compassionate, about honoring the year you have had. When you shift your attitude towards yourself, everything else starts to fall into place. You will make life choices from a space of worthiness, and you will attract what you truly believe you deserve. As Zara puts it, just work on being kind and compassionate to yourself, and see how it gets manifested in goals you were not even thinking of having.