If you want the new year to feel lighter, let go of these 7 draining habits

by Lachlan Brown | January 2, 2026, 11:04 pm

The new year has this weird pressure baked into it: New goals, new habits, and a new version of you!

Sure, ambition is great, but if you’re already tired, “adding more” isn’t the vibe.

Sometimes the lightest, cleanest reset comes from subtraction because a lot of what drains us is the way we’re living it.

Instead of piling on another productivity system or another morning routine, what if you made this year feel lighter by letting go of a few habits that quietly exhaust you?

Here are seven that I’ve noticed (in myself and pretty much everyone I know) that steal way more energy than we realize:

1) Treating your mind like a browser with 47 tabs open

You know that feeling when you sit down to relax and your brain starts speed-running every unfinished task you’ve ever had?

That’s mental clutter.

A lot of us carry our lives in our heads: Reminders, worries, plans, half-decisions, social anxiety, and a running commentary about how we should be doing better.

It’s like trying to meditate inside a shopping mall.

I used to think this was normal like, “Yep, this is adulthood,” but it’s unprocessed noise.

One simple fix that works almost embarrassingly well: externalize your thoughts.

Get them out of your head and onto paper: A messy brain dump, a notes app list, or just a place where your mind doesn’t have to be the storage device.

Here’s the deeper point: Your mind is a tool.

In Buddhist psychology, one of the roots of suffering is getting lost in the mind’s stories.

The mind loves stories, especially anxious ones, but you don’t have to live inside them.

Ask yourself: What’s one thought I’m carrying that doesn’t need to be carried right now?

2) Saying “yes” when you mean “I don’t want to deal with the discomfort”

Let’s be honest: Most of our unwanted commitments aren’t the result of enthusiasm.

They’re the result of avoiding awkwardness.

We say yes because we don’t want to disappoint, we don’t want to seem difficult, we want to be liked, or we’re scared we’ll miss out.

Then we pay for it later with resentment, stress, and that heavy feeling of “Why did I agree to this?”

If you want your year to feel lighter, you need to get comfortable with tiny doses of discomfort upfront because a small “No, I can’t” today prevents a big “I’m overwhelmed and secretly annoyed at everyone” later.

A phrase I’ve learned to love is: “Let me check and get back to you.”

It buys you breathing room, stops you from auto-agreeing, and gives you space to decide like an adult instead of reacting like someone trying to keep the peace.

When you do say no, you don’t need a courtroom-level justification.

3) Keeping a running list of everything that’s wrong with you

This one is sneaky because it wears a disguise: “Self-improvement.”

It sounds responsible to constantly critique yourself, but there’s a difference between growth and self-attack.

If your inner voice is basically a full-time hater, you’re just exhausting yourself.

I’ve met a lot of high-achievers who are disciplined on the outside and brutal on the inside.

They hit goals, and it still doesn’t feel good because the relationship with themselves was the issue.

Here’s what changed things for me: I started treating my mind like a teammate instead of a drill sergeant.

When I messed up, I’d ask: “If a friend did this, what would I say to them?”

Usually, it was something like: “Alright. That wasn’t great. What can you learn? What’s the next step?”

Self-compassion is efficient as it keeps you moving without burning you down.

4) Doomscrolling and calling it “taking a break”

I’ve talked about this before but the modern version of “rest” is often just overstimulation with a different label.

We say we’re decompressing, but we’re really flooding the nervous system with information, outrage, comparison, and ads disguised as content.

The worst part? We don’t even feel refreshed afterward.

We feel foggy, restless, and weirdly empty.

A simple way to spot if something is actually restorative: How do you feel 10 minutes after?

If your “break” leaves you more depleted than before, it’s not a break.

Try swapping one scroll session a day for something that creates space instead of noise:

  • Sit with a coffee without your phone
  • Stretch for five minutes
  • Write down what’s on your mind
  • Go outside and look at the sky like a slightly confused human

You don’t need to become a monk, just stop pretending that chaos is recovery.

5) Holding grudges like they’re a personality trait

A grudge is basically unpaid emotional rent; every day you hold it, you keep paying.

Some people genuinely aren’t safe to keep close, so boundaries matter.

But there’s a difference between having boundaries and dragging old anger into the present like a suitcase you refuse to unpack.

A lot of grudges aren’t even about the other person anymore.

They’re about your ongoing relationship with the event.

You replay it, rewrite arguments in your head, imagine what you should have said, relive the feeling, and your body responds as if it’s happening again.

One practice that helps (and yes, it’s uncomfortable): Write down what you’re still holding onto.

Afterwards, finish this sentence: “I’m afraid that if I let this go, it means ______.”

For many people, the blank is something like “it means what they did was okay,” “it means I was weak,” or “it means I’ll get hurt again.”

Letting go means choosing peace over replay and reclaiming your attention.

6) Trying to control outcomes instead of committing to actions

This is a big one, and it’s at the heart of why so many people feel heavy before the year even really starts.

We want certainty, guarantees, and know that our effort will pay off, that the relationship will work, that the plan will succeed, that we won’t be embarrassed, that it’ll all be worth it.

However, life doesn’t give receipts.

Eastern philosophy talks a lot about attachment in the “stop clinging to outcomes you can’t control” sense because clinging creates tension.

You can do everything “right” and still get an unexpected result.

That’s reality.

So, the lighter approach is this: Commit deeply to what you can control, such as your effort, your consistency, how you treat people, how you respond when things don’t go your way, and loosen your grip on the rest.

There’s a line often attributed to Lao Tzu that gets the spirit of this right: When you stop forcing, things can flow.

That means you act without strangling the outcome.

7) Living on “someday mode” instead of actually being here

Someday mode sounds like “Once I get through this busy period,” “After I lose the weight,” or “When things calm down,” and then years pass because you’re postponing life until it becomes easier.

Life, however, doesn’t really become easier in a neat, permanent way.

It just changes shape.

This year, if you want it to feel lighter, stop treating your current life as a waiting room.

You don’t need to have everything figured out to enjoy a moment.

Once a day, pause and name one thing that’s actually okay right now.

Just something real, such as “The sun feels good,” “I handled that conversation better than I used to,” or “I’m proud I showed up.”

This is presence, and presence is the antidote to that constant heavy feeling of chasing your life instead of living it.

Final words

A lighter year comes from noticing what’s draining you and having the courage to stop feeding it.

So, don’t treat this list like a self-improvement to-do list.

Pick one habit and ask yourself: What would my life feel like if I stopped doing this so much?

The real flex is living with less mental weight—less noise, less resentment, less compulsive distraction, less self-criticism—and realizing you didn’t need most of it in the first place.

Lachlan Brown

Lachlan Brown is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Brown Brothers Media, a digital publishing network reaching tens of millions of readers monthly. He holds a Graduate Diploma of Psychological Studies from Deakin University, though his real education came afterward: a warehouse job shifting TVs, a stretch of anxiety in his mid-twenties, and the slow discovery that studying the mind is not the same as learning how to live well. He started experimenting with Buddhist principles during breaks at the warehouse and eventually began writing about what he was learning. That writing became Hack Spirit, a widely read personal development site, and his book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism became a bestseller. His work breaks down complex ideas into frameworks people can apply immediately, whether they are navigating a career change, a difficult relationship, or the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Lachlan splits his time between Singapore and Saigon. He writes about high-performance routines, decision-making under pressure, digital innovation, and the intersection of Eastern philosophy with modern life. His perspective comes from having built things from scratch, failed at some of them, and learned that clarity comes from practice, not theory.