New Year, Better Me: an approach that focuses on taking small achievable steps to self-betterment. It’s been three years since I was introduced to the concept, back when I was doing a mentorship programme run by the wonderful BADU in East London. But it stuck with me as an interesting alternative to the classic ‘New Year, New Me’.

Before hearing about ‘New Year, Better Me’ I didn’t care much for new years resolutions and the like. I felt there was no point going through the torturous cycle of setting yourself an insurmountable task, only to face the canon event of having to quietly abandon it by February. By focusing on being a ‘better me’ after the 1st of January we can turn our resolutions from inevitable failures to sustainable methods for self-improvement.

“It’s easy to convince yourself that your aspiration was a complete waste of time”

The New Me approach calls on us to transform ourselves anew – cutting off what’s bad or adding something good as if you’re performing an amputation or a transplant. But old habits die hard and new ones aren’t born easily. The chocolate addict cannot cut their favourite snack out of their diet immediately. Nor can someone who’s never gone to the gym realistically expect to keep up doing two or three full-on workouts every week. These impossible missions only set us up for failure. Amid this disappointment, it’s easy to convince yourself that your aspiration was a complete waste of time that should be abandoned completely. Then you’re left just as you were at the beginning of the year.

I know this problem only too well from my attempts to learn a language. It is an ambition I have had for a long time, though I’ve never set it as a new year’s resolution. Fatally, I took the New Me approach to this challenge and tried to cram my language learning into long and intense and unsustainable sessions. And that’s how my past Spanish, French and German grinds all died.

“The phrase ‘New Me’ suggests that the self is something that needs to be demolished and then reconstructed”

But the New Me approach is not just impractical, it also risks harming our self-esteem. The phrase ‘New Me’ suggests that the self is something that needs to be demolished and then reconstructed. But self-reinvention is both impossible and undesirable. No matter how dissatisfied we are with ourselves, it’s always unlikely that things are so dire that we need to start again.

However, by accepting our limits and focusing on gradual progression, the Better Me approach ensures that we set ourselves actually achievable goals. Abstaining from chocolate three days a week or starting off with light one-hour weekly workouts in the gym for example. These are admittedly small steps that won’t get you to the ultimate aspiration, but they’re a start. I’ve seen the success of this approach also through my language learning endeavours. My revived attempt to learn French has focused on doing shorter but more consistent sessions – and it has been my most successful attempt at learning a language so far.

“We can be kinder to ourselves while still embarking on our journeys of self-improvement”

The Better Me approach is also beneficial in the way it promotes self-love. By thinking about ourselves as special projects that need to be refined rather than reinvented, we can be kinder to ourselves while still embarking on our journeys of self-improvement. And frankly, it’s easier to take on measures of self-improvement if you see yourself as worth fighting for, so there’s no reason not to take the self-love approach.

This kind of thinking is especially important in an intense, competitive environment like Cambridge where we can all believe from time to time that we are not good enough and need to do more. The short and hectic terms amplify this by increasing the sense of urgency, pushing the sense that we have to improve immediately. Now, there is nothing wrong with being ambitious, but going too hard too fast will only end in disaster. Instead, by focusing on gradual improvement and achievable goals we can make life feel slower and more manageable, making it easier to find the space to look after ourselves.

So, how are you going to be a better version of yourself in 2026? I wish you good luck with whatever aim you set for yourself. But we should remember to shape these challenges around the principles of realism and self-love. That way you can be sure you’ll be able to say that you are now a better you in 2027.