Forget New Year’s Resolutions. Try This Instead.
By Karen Thom, founder of The Foundation StudioEvery year, we start the same way. Full of intention. Full of hope. Full of declarations about the newer, better version of ourselves that is about to arrive any day now.
And by around 9th January, most of it has unravelled.
Why does this happen every single year - when, on some level, we already know how it usually ends? What really stops us from sticking to our goals?
And what if the problem isn’t willpower at all, but where we’re starting from|? What if there was a completely different way to approach change - one that, by December 2026, could leave us looking back at a genuinely different life, not just another cut-and-paste year?
The Problem with Resolutions
We start with the goal:
Lose weight.
Change career.
Earn more.
Find love.
Get fitter.
And then we try to force ourselves into becoming the person who can achieve it.
Round peg. Square hole.
We often desperately want these things. We think they’ll make us happier, freer, more confident, more fulfilled. So why don’t we follow through?
Because the goal itself isn’t the real issue.
The deeper issue is what’s running quietly underneath it.
And this is where I introduce something very different to the usual New Year rhetoric:
File | Delete™.
The Filing Cabinet That Runs Your Life
Every single one of us is operating from a vast internal filing cabinet.
Our minds are constantly collecting data: the good, the bad, the awkward, the painful, the humiliating, the confusing. It files it all away neatly, without you ever consciously choosing what stays and what goes.
At any moment of stress, challenge, risk or change, it pulls out a file that seems relevant.
Maybe it’s the memory of being told off by a parent or a teacher at five years old - in a shop, in front of the whole class - and the belief that formed that doing things wrong equals humiliation. So now, decades later, you either must always be right… or stay silent.
Maybe it’s being told you were “too much.”
Maybe it’s watching a parent struggle.
Maybe it’s being left out.
Maybe it’s being praised only when you performed.
Thousands of tiny files. All stored away. All still active.
Your brain isn’t trying to sabotage you. Quite the opposite - it’s an incredibly efficient administrator, trying to keep you safe based on past experience.
But what keeps us safe often keeps us small.
So, as we get older and the filing cabinet fills up with more evidence of why change is risky, we start to feel less confident, not more. This is why you’ll so often hear people say they’ve become more cautious with age.
It’s not age.
It’s the filing cabinet.
So, What Is File | Delete™?
File | Delete™ is the process of going back to the beginning instead of starting with the goal.
Instead of asking:
“What do I want to change?”
We ask:
“Why do I react the way I do?”
“Why can’t I stop doing this?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why does this particular thing block me?”
“Why does this keep repeating?”
We follow the emotional thread backwards.
A behaviour. A reaction. A belief. A pattern.
We trace it back through time.
Not just the first version of the story, but the earlier ones underneath it. It’s very rarely the surface memory that holds the deepest charge. We keep going until we reach the root.
Sometimes what we find is what Dr Gabor Maté calls big T, little t - trauma is trauma, and it affects us. It sticks. It might not be dramatic, headline-worthy events, but moments like those tellings-off that shaped how we learned to survive emotionally. And we carry astonishing amounts of these without ever realising it.
When we finally reach the source, something powerful happens.
We see it. We feel it. We acknowledge it.
And often, with space and compassion, we realise:
“I can’t believe I’ve been carrying this.”
“I wasn’t even old enough to decide that.”
“This was never mine to hold.”
We begin to question:
Is this belief even mine?
Was it inherited?
Is it still true?
Does it still serve me?
And what surprises people most is this: very few files truly need filing. Most of the work is understanding where a belief or reaction came from. That alone can be enough to loosen its grip and allow it to release naturally.
Why This Changes Everything
At first, this work can sound heavy. Why would we want to go back and open uncomfortable emotional drawers?
Because something beautiful happens when we do.
The mind gets quieter. Some tabs close. Space appears.
And space is where real desire finally has room to breathe.
That weight-loss goal - is it really just about the scales? Or is it about wanting energy, confidence, strength, health, freedom?
That career goal - is it just about status or about feeling purposeful and alive?
When we connect to purpose, not just outcome, everything changes. Goals stop being short-term punishments and start becoming long-term commitments to the kind of life we actually want to live.
This is why “lose three stone for a holiday” rarely lasts. But “I want to feel strong in my body for the next 30 years” often does. Or “I need that promotion to do X, so I can do Y, so I’ll finally be happier.”
Because the truth is, every time we achieve the thing - or get close to it - the goalposts move. We’re connected to the outcome, not the purpose behind it.
This Is Why I Never Start with Goals
When people come to work with me, we don’t start with resolutions,
The goals will come.
We start with the filing cabinet.
Because until you create space internally, you’re simply stacking more on top of what’s already overloaded. It’s like trying to build a house without digging proper foundations. You might get quite far, but eventually the structure won’t hold.
When you know yourself deeply - when you understand what drives you, protects you, blocks you and motivates you - you no longer need resolutions.
You move with intention instead of force.
Yes, fear still comes. Fear is healthy. It’s an alert system, not a life sentence. It was never designed to freeze us. It simply asks us to check in. Once checked, we choose to move anyway.
It’s a shedding. Like snakeskin.
Old stories. Old beliefs. Old protective patterns.
You move forward not from old reactive patterns - those moments where you think, “Where the hell did that come from?” - but as who you are now.
Try File | Delete™ This New Year
If you want to try this approach for yourself, start here.
Think of one of your “whoa” reactions - the explosive ones that make you think:
“Bloody hell, where did that come from?”
“That doesn’t even feel or sound like me.”
There is always a story running that reaction.
Pick one.
Notice.
Stay with that incident. Follow it back. Do you remember how you felt? Did you feel it anywhere in your body?
Could you describe what it feels like?
If finding the feeling in your body isn’t possible for you, is there a colour, a shape, a word, or a metaphor that fits?
Stay with the sensation.
Let the memories surface.
Follow the thread backwards.
Not just one memory but the ones underneath.
Keep going until you can’t go further.
When you reach the source, ask:
Is this still mine?
Did I choose this?
Does this still serve who I am now?
If not, you already know what to do.
Delete.
And then notice what shifts.
Because this is the work that makes space for the life you’re trying to create - not just for January, but for years to come.
This New Year, instead of asking:
“What should I achieve?”
Try asking:
“What am I finally ready to release?”
