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As fireworks fade and gym memberships spike, New Year’s resolutions once again promise inner transformation. The familiar refrain of “new year, new me” rears its annual head, and I will admit that I have made a vision board for the second year running. Not to manifest in the worldly sense, but to help keep my eyes fixed on what matters: the goals, intentions, and hopes I am prayerfully carrying into the year ahead. As the saying goes, the days are long but the years are short. Without intention or momentum, much can remain stubbornly unchanged.
Still, I hold my plans lightly. My dreams and resolutions sit beneath a deeper truth echoed in Proverbs: a man may plan his way, but the Lord establishes his steps (Prov 16:9).
Yet as the calendar turns, social media fills with productivity hacks, affirmations, and New Age spirituality, capturing the cultural imagination and promising us “our best year yet”. Ironically, many of these trends, stripped of their theological roots, still borrow heavily from Scripture. They have simply removed God from the equation.
Take positive thinking. St Paul writes, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable… think about such things” (Phil 4:8). Christ Himself tells us that the eye is the lamp of the body (Matt 6:22). And the prophet Habakkuk urges us to “write the vision; make it plain” (Hab 2:2). Focus, intention, vision, and attentiveness are not modern inventions. They are profoundly biblical. The difference today is that the focus has quietly shifted from God’s will to self-will, from trust to control, and from surrender to self-sovereignty.
This shift is nowhere more evident than in the rise of self-love, self-care, and self-prioritisation culture. Protecting your energy. Putting yourself first. These phrases have become moral imperatives of modern life. And to be clear, Christianity does affirm a healthy understanding of self-worth. We are made in the image of God, each one of us unrepeatable, so our dignity is inherent, not earned. But what the culture now preaches is something else entirely.
The modern version of self-love often rejects self-gift, the very thing Christianity teaches is the path to joy. Christ does not call us to self-neglect, but He does call us to self-donation, to service, to laying down our lives for our friends (Jn 15:13). Yet our society increasingly praises the opposite: seek comfort, avoid inconvenience, cut people off if they require effort. Community is replaced with convenience, communion with comfort, sacrifice with self-optimisation.
And the result is a generation that is lonelier than any before it.
The Church offers a radically different framework for New Year’s resolutions: continual conversion, not self-improvement. The goal is not to become a more efficient, impressive, or curated version of ourselves, but to be slowly conformed to Christ. A resolution, in this sense, is not about maximising output or polishing habits, but about aligning our lives more closely with God’s will.
This reframing changes everything. It moves resolutions out of the realm of self-fixing and into the spiritual life. We shift away from control and optimisation, and towards cooperation, co-creation, and obedience with our Heavenly Father, who will author the year ahead far more wisely than anything we could script or visualise ourselves. The goal is no longer our “best year yet” measured by achievements or milestones, but a year lived more deeply with God, rooted in trust whatever may come, surrendered to His will, and oriented towards ever-greater intimacy with Christ.
Modern tools can still have their place, but only when rightly ordered. Vision boards, for example, are not inherently unchristian. Habakkuk’s call to “write the vision” affirms the value of clarity and intentionality. The question is orientation. Are we visualising a life centred on personal success, or asking God to illuminate our path of virtue? Are we filling our minds with what is good, true, and beautiful, or with images that inflame comparison, restlessness, and dissatisfaction?
The same applies to self-care. Stewarding our mental and physical health matters. We are not souls trapped in bodies, as the heresy of dualism might have us believe. We are embodied creatures, entrusted with gifts to care for. But Christian self-care exists so that we might love better, serve more freely, and give more generously. Care of self is ordered towards care of neighbour.
In abandoning the relentless pursuit of self-optimisation, there is unexpected freedom. The Church reminds us that our worth is not measured by productivity, discipline, or achievement, but by love, both received and given. When resolutions focus on prayer, virtue, patience, generosity, and service, they cultivate a joy no checklist can ever deliver.
Pope John Paul II warned against confusing conversion with self-mastery. In Redemptoris Missio, he writes that true conversion means “accepting, by a personal decision, the saving sovereignty of Christ”, not enthroning the self. Christianity does not ask us to erase ourselves, but to lose ourselves in love, trusting that this is where life is found.
As we step into a new year with all its hope, longing, and quiet possibility, perhaps the better question is not “How can I improve myself?” but “How is God inviting me to be changed?” Conversion, after all, is not a one-time event, but a lifelong transformation of the heart.
