Crossing Thresholds

Every December and January, the same familiar drumbeat starts up. New year, new goals. New habits. New you.

Social feeds fill with planners, vision boards, fresh gym memberships and shiny declarations about the year ahead. There’s a lot of energy in it - hope, ambition, the promise of a clean slate. And yet, I’ve always felt quietly uncomfortable with the whole thing.

I don’t love the new year, new me vibe.

If I want to be a certain way, or achieve certain things, and I’m not already doing the, what magically changes when the calendar flips to January 1st? If I’ve wanted to build a habit and haven’t managed to sustain it so far, maybe that’s not simply a failure of willpower. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the capacity right now. Maybe motivation is low. Maybe there are real barriers in the way - time, energy, mental load, life circumstances.

I don’t know if it’s helpful to constantly expect more of ourselves as if we aren’t already doing the very best we can with what we have. Sometimes the pressure to constantly optimise and improve can feel like another quiet way of telling ourselves we’re not enough yet.

In December, though, I had a really beautiful conversation about this with a woman within my professional circle and it gently shifted my thinking.

Rather than rejecting the whole idea of “fresh starts,” maybe there’s something worth reclaiming in it. Maybe it’s not the intention that’s the problem, but how commercialised and performative it’s become. And New Year’s isn’t the only threshold in our lives; it’s just the loudest one.

Thresholds are everywhere.

They exist at the turn of each season, not just the turn of the year. They appear in the beginning and ending of relationships. In career moves, relocations, health changes, parenthood, loss, recovery, reinvention. They show up quietly in moments of personal growth and self-discovery, the internal shifts no one else sees.

So often, we rush straight through these moments without pausing to notice them, to reflect.

What if thresholds aren’t about becoming someone entirely new overnight? What if they’re invitations to consciously mark transition?

Moments to ask ourselves:

• What am I ready to leave behind?

• What do I want to carry forward with me?

• What no longer fits the person I’m becoming?

• What deserves more care, attention, or protection?

  
  

That kind of reflection doesn’t require perfection or grand declarations. It doesn’t demand a radical reinvention. It asks for honesty, compassion, and curiosity, a willingness to gently check in with ourselves as we cross from one chapter into another.

When we see thresholds this way, they stop being about pressure and start becoming about presence. Maybe the real value isn’t in setting bold resolutions, but in creating small rituals of awareness. Pausing at the edges of change. Naming what mattered. Acknowledging what was hard. Honouring what we survived, learned, or outgrew.

Life is full of doorways. Some we step through intentionally. Others we’re pushed through by circumstance. Either way, we’re always crossing something; seasons, identities, relationships, versions of ourselves.

Perhaps the invitation isn’t to become someone new each January, but to cross each threshold with intention and awareness.