Im Over "New Year, New Me"

The new year shows up loud — new goals, new habits, new pressure.
 And honestly? I’m over it.

In this episode I’m sharing why the “New Year, New Me” mentality no longer resonates with me — and how it often sets us up to be harder on ourselves instead of more compassionate.

A new year is just another day we get to be alive. We don’t need January 1st to change, grow, or begin again. Real change doesn’t happen overnight — it happens through small, steady habits, self-awareness, and learning to listen to our bodies.

In this honest, heart-led conversation, I talk about:

• Why harsh resolutions often lead to burnout and self-judgment
• The difference between pressure-filled goals and gentle, sustainable habits
• Why I prefer the idea of a reset over “new year, new me”
• How expectations — especially unspoken ones — set us up for disappointment
• What it means to live day by day instead of constantly chasing what’s next
• Why feeling your feelings, resting, crying, laughing, and slowing down all matter
• How small moments of courage add up to meaningful change

I also share what’s coming next on the podcast, including an upcoming series centered around grief, death, and legacy — and why these conversations matter more than ever.

This episode is an invitation to take the pressure off of 2026.
 To calm things down.
 To choose ease, peace, honesty, and self-love.

You don’t need to become someone new this year.
 You get to return home to yourself.

✨ Let this be the year we stop pushing — and start listening.

You can find me at:
https://www.instagram.com/cataton/
https://www.facebook.com/casey.taton/

You can find what sparks me at:
https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1AgeRtyojY/
https://www.instagram.com/lmbdcelebrations/

Music by: Jason and Ashley Scheufler
Artwork by: https://www.instagram.com/graphx_ink/

Transcript

0:04

Hey friends. Welcome to the Enter Spark podcast. I'm your host, Casey Caton. If you're looking to hear stories of transformation and personal growth, this podcast is for you. My guest and I will be sharing those sparking moments that has changed the mental living a more fulfilling authentic life. I'm so excited for you to hear each unique story. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. Hey friend. Welcome back to the Enter Spark podcast. I'm your host, Casey Taton. Happy New Year. Okay. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I am so over this new year, new me, and I'm sorry if you disagree with me, that's fine. We can be fine disagreeing. Here's why. The new year is simply another day that we get to live. And if we're truly grateful for every day we're living, we can change it any day. We don't need to wait for a new year. And more than often, all these people set all these goals and intentions, and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. And they fell. They fell because they're too hard on themselves. You can't say, I'm gonna go to the gym six days a week or five days a week and go for the rest of the year. I expect myself to go, or I'm gonna go three times and then I'm gonna move up. You, you don't drive a car and swerve to the right and not hit something. You stay in your own lane. So why would you think that you could set these goals? And stick with them. And I know there are some people that yes, they a hundred percent do. And I'm not saying that I don't set goals. I set long-term things that I wanna look at, that I wanna accomplish. And over the year, and I also set back and I did reflecting. Wow, what did I do last year? Can you believe on the 11th on one 11, my podcast have been out for over a year. That's pretty freaking amazing. But I don't step into the new year saying New Year, new me. Why? Because I'm Casey. I'm a authentically Casey. Yes, I may be growing and changing and doing the work, but I don't wake up tomorrow, A brand new person with all these brand new habits. You can wake up tomorrow with a new day, a new attitude. But let's just keep it simple this year. Can we be soft and calm this year? I just, it feels like the world's been chaotic. The first of the year is like go, go, go. And what if we just took it slow? What if we took it day by day and enjoyed the things, the little things. And when I say I don't set goals, I'm saying that because I do have daily habits that I work to change and I, there are things I work on every day. I do a gratitude journal. I have amazing mentors. I can't speak highly enough of them. And right now I'm doing one with Kathy Heller and we're doing a 14 day reset. I like saying reset, thinking of reset better than, oh, I'm just new me tomorrow. Like that's, to me, that's not a doable action. So what if we're just gentle and we're like, oh, I'm gonna reset my body. And what it is is every morning we start with a meditation and journaling, and we're looking at the long-term things like we're working our way up. And those are things I do all the time. Is I already, yes, I have this big dream, this big thing. I know that I'm, it's gonna happen. It's gonna be that, or something better that I'm working on. But during that weight, I have to give myself breaks because if I set every day up as this has to happen and this has to happen, and you know, put all these expectations in the day, I'm just waiting for failure. I feel like I'm setting myself up for failure. Like, does anybody else feel that? I mean, if you look at the gems right now, they're packed. Everybody's like, new Year, new me. I'm doing this. You realize you can start that anytime, right? Let's just start this by being honest with ourself. Who am I? How do I wanna fill every day? What if we calm things down this year? I mean, my habits do include going to the gym during the week. It's what starts my morning. That and a meditation. That's how I start my days. But that doesn't mean that's right for everybody. So you have to feel what's right for you. And yes, during the year, I changed what I'm eating and what I'm doing to whatever I'm going through at that time. And I'm gonna be honest. I, if I say that expecta, I don't set expectations. I sometimes do slip and set expectations of how I think a night's gonna go. I did it on New Year's Eve friends, and I was like, oh, this will be so fun. We can do this and we can have sparklers and this will be so fun. And I was like, whoa, whoa. Oh, why did I assume that somebody else would wanna do that with me? And that it would all work out. I could've wouldn't have done that myself. But when I put an expectation on someone else, without them knowing, I'm setting myself up for failure. And I feel like that's what so many of us do in the beginning of the new year. And I'm really here just to say, what if we calm the new year down? What if we look at every day as a new day that we're alive, we're thriving, maybe we're struggling. Maybe we're feeling our feelings. There's a whole list of things you can go through, but let's just calm this year down of not New Year, new me. Hey, I'm working on myself every day and today that may fail. Today I may lay in my bed and cry, or I may call my friend and cry. But then guess what? I get to pick myself up and start over, and there's no pressure of like, I failed myself. Let's just take the pressure off of 2026 and let it be a year of feelings of feeling our feelings. Yeah, I said it. Crying is okay, allow yourself to do it. Laughing, smiling, let's have more fun. Let's incorporate fun. And every day I just, it's been weighing on my heart and I think I'm just gonna tell you what's coming up. So I was gonna kick it off right in January and it's not the right time right now. So it will probably happen in February because I wanna have all the episodes recorded before I do it. But I'm gonna talk about grief and the truth of it is, is because with Little Moments, big Dreams, celebrations, the organization I run has been dealing with a lot of kids on hospice and, and it's never easy. Cool. And you know what? It also isn't easy grieving because we haven't learned how to grieve. We also don't really know what to say to people. So I'm gonna do a whole topic about grief and death because it's real. I'm here to tell you like, really the only thing that matters. Is the digits between your name on your grave when you die, the day you were born and the day you died. What did you do between that time? That's really what matters. What legacy did you live? And so that's what we're gonna go into. I have some other good podcast guests that I wanna get out before I go into that, and then I'm gonna do a series on it. So Snake Peak, that's what's coming up. I was gonna kick it off in January and decided, you know, why don't we let the New Year people calm down a little bit and then we'll go into it. So if you're one of the New Year, new me people, tell me what that looks like for you and tell me how you're not going to allow yourself to be hard on yourself if you fail, because we all fail at different things. Well, I'm not gonna say, I'm actually gonna take that back. Is it truly failure or is it a learning lesson? Huh. My good friend Tracy Hill would tell me that, Casey, you don't ever fail. You learn. I learn from everything I do. It may have not turned out how I wanted, but I'm learning. Thank you, Tracy. I love you. She's a human design coach. Go get your human design because she's the best and it'll help you in life in so many ways. But we're here to let go of the new year, new me, and just start living day for day. If you wanna set goals or milestones or whatever in the world you wanna call it, that's fine, but let's drop it down and be realistic with ourselves and let's let this year be the year of the calm, bringing peace, joy, fun, love loving ourselves. The most important thing to love of everything is our ourself. Let's let that be the theme of 2026, the year I felt my feelings, the year I loved myself. The year? I spoke my truth, the I set boundaries. I can go on and on and on. But here's the thing. I'm not pressuring myself to do any of them. I am creating habits that I do, and eventually it'll become natural for me. But habits take a long time to form, and that's why so many people freaking let themselves down or call it failure or whatever, because it doesn't happen overnight. Change doesn't happen overnight. We didn't gain 20 pounds in our sleep or 50 pounds. We're not gonna lose 50 pounds overnight. I mean, I guess you could go out and drastically change your look and call it a new year, new me. But what if we just say, this is the year for change. This is the year for growth. This is the year for loving ourselves and bringing it back to us. I'm here for that. Friends, I would love to know your thoughts. How did your new year start? Where are you at? What are you doing? Do you set goals? I mean, if I write a whole list of what I want my year to look like and I set it to the side, and I have this big, big idea of what I want to eventually do, and every day I'm working on that, I, but I don't let myself forget because I'm constantly making habits, so I'm not letting myself down. And if the dream that I've set doesn't turn out how it's supposed to, it's not that it's this or something better, and I believe that truly happens. So it's just been weighing on my heart of all this big energy and like, what if we just come 2026 down? What if this is the year we love our neighbors? This is the year we start paying attention to what's happening around us? What's happening that I can't control. I can control what I say to someone else. I can control how I respond to someone else, how I act. If I give someone a smile, that's it. I can't control what my neighbor's doing. I can't control what's gonna come outta somebody else's mouth. And I sure in the, I can't control what's happening in the world, but I can control what's happening with me. And 2026 is gonna be the year. Of calm, ease, peace, all the beautiful things. And the one thing I do do is I send a word of the year, and I told you last year my word was open and my friend Jennifer List just had her word party last night. And although I think I'm pretty confident in the word I'm not a hundred percent confident, I'm not sure that's the word yet. Because words could go in a hundred different ways and have a hundred different meanings. And I learned that last year with open. So I'll tell you, I'll, when I get to a decision of what my word is, I'll tell you what it is. Those are the things that I do. So I would love to know what you do. To not just kick off the year with a big bang, and then do you stick with that big bang? Are you able to keep going? Because that feels really pushy and really hard to me, and I've learned last year. The more I push myself, the more my body says, no, thank you, and it'll physically shut you down. So happy New Year. Let's bring in 2026 with calm. Ease, peace, whatever word, whatever energy type you want. But let's bring it down and let's be easy on ourselves this year. And you can still achieve big things by taking small actions. My mentor actually says, and it comes from several people, 20 seconds of courage. If I take 20 seconds of courage today, what does that look like? All those 20 seconds of courages every day are going to add up to something big. So maybe you're a 22nd per person. Go take 20 seconds of courage every day. It's a good idea. Definitely gets you outta your comfort zone, but let's just really make this a year of returning home to us. All right. Thanks for listening, friends. Thank you for tuning into another episode. I hope today's story inspired you to embrace your own journey of growth and change. Remember, transformation isn't always easy, but it's always worth it. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe. Share it with a friend, and leave a review. If you found something that sparked you in this episode and may spark a friend, I encourage you to go share with them. If you have your own story you would like to share, I would love to hear it. So please reach out to me. Until next time, friends, go have some fun and let those sparks lie.