What New Year’s Resolutions Really Say About You

Exercise more. Drink less. Learn Portuguese. Be present. Get organised. Start over.

New Year’s resolutions are often dismissed as unrealistic or performative, as a ritual we know we won’t fully keep. But that misses their real purpose. Resolutions are not forecasts. They are mirrors.

What we resolve to change usually reveals more about how we’ve been living than where we think we’re going.

The resolutions that surface here in the Algarve often reflect a particular kind of yearning. Expats promise to finally commit to Portuguese lessons after years of getting by with fragments. Others vow to explore beyond their usual radius, to visit that village they always drive past, to swim at a different beach, to stop living like a tourist in their own adopted home. These aren’t really about language or geography. They’re about belonging, about closing the gap between living somewhere and truly being part of it.

The person who vows to “slow down” is rarely lazy. More often, they’ve been living at an unsustainable pace, mistaking constant motion for meaning. The promise to rest is less about comfort and more about repair.

Those who resolve to “get healthier” are not always chasing aesthetics. Sometimes it’s a quiet acknowledgement that their body has been absorbing stressors that their mind has normalised. Health, in this sense, becomes a boundary rather than a goal.

Then there are the resolution-makers who want structure. The planners, the builders of routines and systems. These are often people emerging from chaos: a year of upheaval, transition, or emotional noise. Organisation is not about control so much as safety.

Interestingly, some people don’t make resolutions at all. That, too, says something. For some, it reflects contentment, a sense that life doesn’t require any dramatic correction. For others, it signals fatigue: a reluctance to ask more of themselves after a demanding year.

There’s also a quieter category of resolutions that rarely gets discussed. These are not about improvement but about permission. To say no more often. To stop explaining. To leave situations that no longer fit. These resolutions are less visible, but often the most consequential.

What all of this suggests is that resolutions are rarely about becoming someone new. They’re about returning to alignment with our energy, our values, our limits.

In my experience here in Portugal, the New Year arrives without the same sense of urgency found elsewhere. There is less pressure to reinvent and more room to recalibrate. Perhaps that’s why resolutions here often sound softer: walk more, cook better, spend time with people who matter. They reflect a cultural instinct toward sustainability rather than acceleration.

So if you find yourself making (or avoiding) resolutions this year, it may be worth asking a different question. Not “Will I keep this?” but “What is this trying to tell me about the year I’ve just lived?”