For a generation that has known nothing other than a culture that champions limitless self-expression, risk avoidance, pleasure, and choice, it is striking that so many young people are now beginning to embrace a lifestyle of boundaries, discipline, and voluntary discomfort.

According to a recent survey, a significant portion of Gen Z’s New Year’s resolutions now include daily meditation (23 per cent), gratitude journalling (17 per cent), intermittent fasting (21 per cent), cold water therapy (18 per cent), breathwork (14 per cent), deleting dating apps (10 per cent), and celibacy (8 per cent). Each of these practices is characterised by self-restraint, a virtue that has largely not been inculcated in us children of the twenty-first century.