Between her 430 million Instagram followers, reported $800m net worth and close friendship with Taylor Swift, it’s rare that I feel a kinship with pop star Selena Gomez. But 11 days into the new year, a headline makes me wince in recognition: “Selena Gomez is back on Instagram, 18 hours after announcing a social media break.”
I’ve been feeling especially conscious of my bad habits – possibly because a depressing body of evidence suggests that we’ve typically given up on our new year’s resolutions by mid-January.
I’ve already spent 45 minutes on Instagram today, though it’s not yet noon. I’m two cups of coffee down, and not ruling out a third. My slight headache is a sobering reminder of the three pints I ended up having last night, after a spur-of-the-minute Hinge date foiled my plan for a quiet evening. And I’ve just taken a drag on an almost-empty vape, the last I swore I’d buy.
At least I haven’t eaten any sugar – yet.
As you can tell, I’m ambivalent about my supposed vices, and even somewhat attached to them. Most of the time, I’m able to shrug them off as life’s dependable pleasures, acceptable in moderation. But the ambient pressure to be better, always insidious, is especially acute at the start of a new year.
My news feeds are full of talk of financial goal-setting, fitness gains, alcohol-free beverages and sugar substitutes. Friends are committing to dry January, 10,000 steps a day and giving up junk food. Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I’m missing a trick by sitting out the opportunity for a fresh start.
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“There’s a lot of focus at this time of year on what we plan to start doing, or stop doing,” says counselor Georgina Sturmer. She links it to the excesses of the festive season just past: “It almost becomes like small talk: ‘What are you giving up? What are you changing?’”
But the flipside to this focus on self-improvement is self-scrutiny. We become more aware of our supposed flaws and failings, though they may not be causing any particular harm – and may even bring us pleasure.
My friend Hilary, for instance, wonders aloud about whether she “should” give up caffeine, despite the fact that she’s clearly reluctant – and has enjoyed a daily flat white for years with no apparent adverse effects.
Many of us feel this pressure to hold ourselves to more and higher standards. “Particularly among women, perfectionism is a huge challenge,” says Sturmer. “It makes it impossible to be content.”
If anything, the discourse can make me feel mutinous, like I want to eat, drink and vape myself silly in a stand against this culture of self-improvement.
Mark, 33, tells me that a friend rebelled against dry January last year by resolving to have at least one drink every day, “whether it was some beers with a friend, or a dram of whisky before bed”. (Note: the UK’s National Health Service suggests drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol – about six pints – a week.)
Unbelievably, Mark’s friend made it to April, at which point he confessed to feeling not “so good”, says Mark. “He gave up on his resolution that night.”
I understand the frustration, if not the appetite for self-destruction. Modern culture, valorising “wellness” and productivity, often separate from questions of health, can make it feel as though extending our lives is more important than actually enjoying them.
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At the same time, most of us have behaviours that we’d really like to kick, especially those that are expensive, risky or out of alignment with our best selves.
Another YouGov survey, from 2022, revealed the range of US adults’ “bad habits”. The top five were: not exercising enough, not saving enough money, procrastinating, sleeping too little and staying up too late.
Many respondents admitted that they’d been unsuccessful in curbing these behaviours, even as they acknowledged the negative impact on their lives.
It makes me wonder if there’s a gentler way of thinking about our “bad” habits – one that doesn’t involve banishing them with an urgency we can’t sustain, and maybe don’t even feel.
It comes down to a question of motivation and – just as importantly, though it’s often overlooked – reward, says Fuschia Sirois, a professor of social and health psychology at Durham University, who researches procrastination, self-compassion and wellbeing.
When people are intrinsically motivated to change their behaviour, they generally tend to succeed. But those inclined to what Sirois terms “socially prescribed perfectionism” – driven to meet an ideal standard set by friends, peer groups, celebrities, the media or a mix – struggle.
“That’s an extrinsic source of motivation,” she says. “You feel like if you do it, you’ll fit in better, and others will approve … and we know that that type of motivation is not particularly effective.”
Thus, thinking that you “should” quit drinking does little to support the goal. And should you cave and order a beer, you might find it harder to get back on track. “Especially if you’ve got perfectionist tendencies, you think: ‘I shouldn’t be lapsing – what’s wrong with me?’” says Sirois.
Even thinking about our goal can undermine our pursuit of it, a 2012 study found. It may be that we’re not all that convinced of the need to change, or that the benefits of kicking a bad habit would really be worth the effort of giving it up.
As much as alcohol, caffeine, sugar, social media and nicotine can have adverse effects for our wellbeing, if we neglect to account for the pleasure they bring us we’re less likely to be able to quit.
“A lot of these behaviours are tied to our social network,” says Sirois. “If you go out on Friday night and have a drink with your friends, you’re engaging in socially healthy behaviour.” Fond memories and even meaningful relationships “can be brokered on the back of engaging in not-so-healthy behaviours”, she says.
When evaluating our bad habits, the key factor is their impact, says Sirois: “Are they having a harmful effect? That can only be judged in the context of your other goals.”
For instance, you might commit now to improving your health because of a genetic predisposition to illness, or to extend your quality of life in old age. Others are more “present-oriented” and focused on their current enjoyment, says Sirois.
Either way, those are trade-offs we can only judge for ourselves.
Alice, 36, quit smoking 10 years ago; she also doesn’t drink, limits her caffeine intake and considers herself a “bit of a health nut”. The one exception she’s allowed herself is nicotine lozenges.
Having initially started buying them to wean herself off nicotine altogether, now she’s decided: “I want to keep my one ‘vice’,” says Alice.
The lozenges help her to concentrate and manage her stress. They’re also affordable and discreet, she says. “According to both my doctor and my dentist, there’s no harm done – so I’ve just made peace with it.”
It illustrates what Sturmer, the counselor, describes as the “hierarchy of bad habits”. “Some really are worse for our physical and mental wellbeing than others,” she says.
Often, we’ve developed “bad habits as coping strategies”, helping us to manage difficult thoughts, feelings or experiences, says Sturmer.
She suggests that we try to understand what triggers send us reaching for them, and any physical sensations they might provoke. “It’s about distinguishing ourselves from our behaviours … and you start by becoming aware of them.”
Sirois likewise emphasises the importance of self-compassion and slow, sustainable change. People expect progress to be linear, “but an upward trajectory is not a smooth one”, she says. When stressed, tired or otherwise vulnerable, “we’re more likely to lapse – and that’s just being human”.
Sirois herself took some two years to quit smoking – “partly because I’m an academic”, she adds, wryly. “I don’t like any absolutes.”
She began by cutting down on cigarettes before allowing herself only the odd one when out with friends – without inhaling. “After about six months or so of fake-smoking, just putting it to my mouth, I realised I didn’t even really like that any more.”
Accepting and exploring what she enjoyed about smoking – the social aspect, and the ritual of putting something to her mouth – was key to giving it up, says Sirois. “You’re still going to have that drive for pleasure … so ask yourself: what am I getting from the habit, and what can I substitute that with?”
It will probably take trial and error, she says, “but eventually you start to get a taste for the new habit, and it makes it easier to drop the old one”.
A 2020 study on New Year’s resolutions found that those that were formulated in terms of “approaching rather than avoiding something” were significantly more successful.
“Damp January”, for instance, encourages drinking less alcohol, more mindfully over the month, rather than eliminating it altogether.
Instead of giving up our pleasures, we might aim to bring more and different ones in – to reconcile our real and ideal selves, or at least bring them closer together.
To quote from On Giving Up, the recent book by author and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: “We give things up when we believe we can change; we give up when we believe we can’t.”
It’s easy to sympathise with Selena Gomez’s short-lived social media hiatus, but maybe 18 hours away from Instagram was just what she needed to reset the habit. In any case, it’s much longer than I’ve managed so far this year.
