Resetting My 2025 Goals
It's only January and my New Year's Resolution already needed an update.
Fair warning: The beginning of this post tackles body image issues and weight tracking. Although I share later on how I try to move past this flawed approach towards fitness, please tread lightly or skip to the next section if these things are triggering for you.
It’s January 2nd and I’m riding a multicab home from the gym. I laugh to myself as I mentally replay the moment the numbers came up on the body scanner: Body fat percentage: 25.6. As soon as I arrive at my apartment, I pick up the ring-bound notebook I use for to-do lists and goals and flip to the page where I wrote my New Year’s Resolutions for 2025. One of the goals listed was “Reduce body fat percentage to 15.” Already ridiculously ambitious, I know, but somehow I believed in that number back in December when my scan told me I was at 21.8.
But from 25.6? No way in hell is that happening. I toss the notebook onto the couch in exasperation. What was I thinking?
I immediately realize that I got this all wrong. Why did I write that goal in the first place? Why was I going to reduce my personal worth and success to a silly little number?
On Resolutions
Most people I know don’t really like making New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve heard most of the criticisms for it: the timing is arbitrary, people don’t really follow through on them, they make you feel inadequate, et cetera. Not for me though. I can barely get anything done if I don’t set a goal and have it written down on paper. And for some reason, the idea of committing to some kind of change at the beginning of the year always excites me.
Last year, it was because of my resolution to be more fit and to improve my fashion sense that I was able to do just that. I had moved away from not being the exercising type to being someone who goes to the gym regularly. I went from going everywhere in a T-shirt and jorts to putting in an effort to look good, feel good, and express myself through my outfits. I claimed 2024 as My Year of Transformation right at the beginning and can confidently confirm achieving that by the end.
New Year’s Resolutions simply work for me.
Sometimes, however, I set the wrong goals or I take an unhealthy approach towards them. Sometimes I set myself up for failure by being overly ambitious and unrealistic and writing down impossible numbers. I’m well aware that some of the greatest achievements in history have been accomplished by sheer determination and force of will. But I also have to accept the fact that as much as I dream of looking like the statue of David, I’m a software engineer who has to work a 9-to-5 desk job to make a living. I’m not some fitness influencer who literally gets paid to exercise. Some days after work, I simply do not have the energy or motivation to lift a dumbbell.
Resolutions Reset
So here I am, resetting my goals. It’s only January and I’m already updating my New Year’s Resolutions. But that’s the thing, right? The timing for resolutions is completely arbitrary. And I shouldn’t exist to serve my goals, they should exist to serve me.
This year, for many reasons, I want to simplify.
I’ve lived as if I had access to ill-gotten wealth in the past few years since entering the workforce—going to concerts and musicals and shows almost weekly, falling prey to book haul culture, shopping for new clothes regularly, and buying gifts for most of my friends’ birthdays. But me having to move out a few months ago was such a huge wake up call. Contrary to that annoyingly consumerist GenZ expression “the money will return”, the day came when the money actually did not return because suddenly I had to purchase furniture, buy appliances, pay a deposit, and now have to spend a sizeable portion of my monthly salary on rent.
So I’m changing my ways. I’m taking an effort to change my mindset from “try everything once” to “it’s okay to miss out on stuff”. I have to tell myself that it’s okay not to go to that concert. It’s okay to borrow an ebook on Libby instead of buying a brand new physical copy. And by God, it’s okay to spend your weekends sleeping! (It’s actually pretty great. I highly recommend it.)
So here are my updated 2025 Goals. It’s a lot less intimidating than what I came up with last December.
1. Try or rediscover new physical activities
Since last year, I’ve decided that even though I would strive to be more fit, I would never try to hit a target weight. Weight alone isn’t a reflection of health or fitness as it doesn’t account for genetics, skeletal mass, and muscle mass. I would still like to reduce my body fat percentage not for aesthetic reasons or to conform to unrealistic beauty standards, but because the status of my health necessitates it.
However, I do not want to operate from a place of fear of what illness may befall me, so the approach I’m taking is to pay attention to what I feel. I want to not run out of breath when I take the stairs. I want to be able to put my socks on and clip my toenails comfortably. I want to walk confidently in public knowing I could defend myself should the need arise. And I want to experience the joys of play and the thrill of breaking a sweat.
So this year I want to try or rediscover new physical activities. Last year I tried gym, dance classes, and freediving. This year, I’m pretty much open to anything! I could join a run club, try pilates, go bouldering, or I can revisit activities I’ve done before like hiking, badminton, or volleyball. Trying out three new activities this year would be a good number, but the number is not as important as the enjoyment I get out of it. I’m approaching fitness with the mindset that I’m here to do something fun, not with the goal of getting a six-pack.
One of my more specific goals for this year is to go on a hike with my boyfriend where we get to camp and go stargazing at the end.
2. Write regularly
Now that I can’t afford to go to events and shows as much as I used to, I want to spend most of my weekends writing. I have always loved writing and I was so excited to try blogging here on Substack at the beginning of the year. I want to write about whatever topic comes to mind, but one of the main things I want to accomplish this year is to complete my personal Oscars Project.
As a lover of movies and as someone who gets excited when the film awards season comes around, it has been one of my goals for a while to watch every single Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards (colloquially known as the Oscars) from the year I was born to the present. And for each year, I want to come up with my own ranking for each of the nominees. I’ve been making good progress on this project since last year and want to share my rankings here as I complete them.
I’m aware that the Oscars has its many controversies from its favor towards Harvey Weinstein projects at the height of his career to the lack of diversity among acting nominees pre-2016. (Also what is up with all the Emilia Pérez nominations this year?) Still, I think it’s a good starting point for newbie cinephiles like me who want to get into the craft and art of film. I am also fascinated by how Hollywood and award-giving bodies reflect the politics of the area as well as the current state of society.
3. Reduce my book collection
I never thought I’d come to this point as an avid reader, but I am genuinely sick of owning so many books! They collect so much dust, they take up so much space, and most of them are left unread for years anyway. My apartment should not be holding 250+ books.
I had already started unhauling books a few years ago, but this year I honestly want most of them gone. I don’t want my shelves to have stacks behind stacks anymore. So this year, there will be less buying and more reading and selling. I can’t afford to entertain myself with regular concerts anyway, so might as well chip away at my physical TBR (to-be-read) pile on the weekends!
At the beginning of the year, I had a total of 99 unread books. Barf. It’s going to be a challenge to read them all by December, so I want to aim for only 50 unread books by the end of the year. In line with this, I want to abandon the mindset that I can’t get rid of a book unless I’ve read it, so if there’s an unread book that I’m no longer interested in reading anytime soon, I’m going to sell it or give it away. The same goes for my collection of read books, if I don’t plan on rereading it, regardless of whether it’s a favorite or not, there’s no reason for me to keep it. I want to unhaul a minimum of 15 books or series this year.
I may not be done with reading, but I am so done with owning a crap ton of books. Book haul culture and building a home library is out, minimalism and selective purchasing of books is in! After all, I have a Libby account where I can borrow ebooks and audiobooks for free. Might as well utilize it to check whether a book is worth owning physically.
4. Be financially wise
I’m gonna be honest, this is gonna be a tough one for me. For privacy reasons, I don’t want to get into specific numbers, but the two main things I want to achieve this year are: one, build an emergency fund worth at least 3 months of my living expenses, and two, regrow my savings (which significantly depleted when I moved out) and never let it go below a specific threshold. In addition, I also want to spend my money on things that will prepare me for the future like investments and insurance.
I really want to be wiser in my spendings this year, and it will definitely be a process. A lot of it has to do with taking the time to heal from the fear of missing out I’ve developed since high school. While I grew up with a certain amount of privilege that allowed me to thrive all throughout my schooling days, I have come to recognize once I had a job and started having my own money that there were so many things that my peers growing up got to do and buy and wear that I never had and learned to make do without. This long-festering and deep-seated envy led me to a vicious cycle of wanting to fit in and hopping on the latest buying trends and making sure that I was keeping up on all the stuff that everyone else around me seemed to have.
But I’ve realized that I was never going to be able to keep up. I needed to learn gratitude for the little things. I needed to find satisfaction in living a simple life without luxury. I needed to recognize that material things do not bring lasting gratification. That’s not to say that I’m never going to treat myself to another musical or a fancy dinner until the end of time. I just need to be strategic and mindful about which ones and when and how often I spend on them. I need to embrace the reality that mundanity now will give me peace of mind later.
This Little Life
Those are pretty much all my goals for this year: straightforward, realistic, and most importantly, they encourage me to simplify, which is exactly what I want for myself this year more than anything. I’m not trying to be funny, but at this stage of my life, I genuinely just want to live out the vibes of Cordelia’s viral song “Little Life”.
This is how I want to improve as a person this year. I hope by the end of 2025 I’ll be able to confidently say, “See how I didn’t live my life in excess and self-indulgence? Very mindful, very demure.”
We share a lot of the same resolutions this year :)