The ONE resolution YOU REALLY NEED THIS JANUARY...

The New Year arrives in a rush of good intentions. New planners. Gym trials. Fresh notebooks. Whole aisles of 'clean slates', all ready to be purchased for a small fee, of course.

- By ANNE FLETCHER

And yet, behind the slogans and enthusiasm, something quieter hums through so many women's lives — exhaustion. Not just the kind that a weekend lie-in can fix, but the deep, habitual fatigue that comes from holding everything and everyone together for too long.

If that’s you — capable, kind, but quietly worn thin — this year’s most radical resolution might not be another plan to do more. It might be the opposite. A promise to care for yourself before you care for anyone else. Because before you can rebuild confidence or banish brain fog (themes we'll explore later in this issue), you need a base.

And that base is you — but a you who is rested, nourished, rebalanced, resourced.

The culture of always doing

Wellbeing expert Dr Andy Cope says many of us are suffering from 'Hurried Woman Syndrome'. 'It's not an official medical diagnosis,' he says, 'but it captures a very real pattern - a cluster of physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms seen in women trying to "do it all".

It's a lifestyle so normalised that we barely see it anymore: alarm clocks, emails, mental lists, school runs, deadlines, groceries, texts. We are in perpetual motion.

But Dr Cope argues that happiness can't be found by adding more to this constantly growing list. 'The closest we might come to achieving it is to move away from that list entirely — to focus instead on what we're being, not what we're doing.' He calls it the 'to-be list'.

'If I asked you, “What 10 things do you want, that aren’t things?” you'd probably say happiness, peace, time, laughter, love, kindness, rest and friendship. That’s your clue. Recalibrate towards who you want to be while you go about your to-do list.'

He believes this shift changes our nervous system as much as our mindset. 'When you orient yourself around being, you naturally slow your pace. You start noticing the small things — the glimmers.'