Why 2020 has been a good year and why I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions

10 min readJan 1, 2021

Now I know what you’re thinking, how is that possible? Hear me out. You’re going to think about 2020 a bit differently once I’m finished.

The beginning of 2020 felt like any other, I came back to work on 4th January. It’s the same thing all over again. Little did we know a virus would bring the whole world to a standstill. Mid Feb / Early march is the first I hear of this virus, we don’t think anything of it. There has been many in the past but life just goes on. We continue on our lives… wake up, shower, breakfast, commute, work, commute, dinner, sleep. All over again. This is how I have felt for quite a while. I have also got the added complication of a medical condition or two, which I was born with… we won’t go into the details but let’s just say I am very lucky to be in the condition I am in now, that thanks to my parents and the doctors I saw growing up. Although what I would say is often Doctors don’t know the nutrition side of things which I believe may have helped me up to today.

Here we are 2020, mid-march, I send a slightly worried email to my bosses at work to highlight my medical condition and that I would be grateful if I could work from home. Thankfully they appreciated my predicament and agreed that would be wise. I hadn’t worked from home for an extended amount of time and my initial thought was, this is going to fun, wake up just in time for work, time to do my own thing throughout the day while ensuring work gets done. Then things get serious, lockdowns put in place and I was on my own, a lot. I found this hard. Sometimes, it’d be very quiet in the apartment and I wasn’t always sleeping that well because I was at home a lot and distracted by stuff I was watching on YouTube or on Instagram — you know the feeling of watching one video and then you end up heading down a rabbit hole of another video or post. I didn’t go for walks very often as I was a little worried about this virus — I had no idea how serious it was. So then I started to read a lot and talk to people who have had experience working from home for a longer period of time and how they plan and structure their days. It was obvious I needed to do something about this as at one point I didn’t go outside for weeks, leaving me a feeling pretty drained and lethargic — when that sets in you don’t make good decisions and you can’t think clearly. Nobody needs this. Something had to change.

Initially I started to do yoga in the mornings (Yoga with Adriene on YouTube), then I moved on to doing body weight exercises before shower and breakfast. By the time, 9am came around, I was feeling amazing and ready for the day. I was doing this for a few months while also getting pretty good at planning my meals throughout the week, cooking more than I need in the evenings in order to package the left overs up for lunch over the next few days. It was going well.

Something wasn’t quite right. I don’t know what it was but I just don’t know if I was really flowing well with the work life balance. I needed to find the answers to be better at this thing called life. There are so many resources online but it all felt pretty overwhelming — I just didn’t know where to start. Fast forward to 1st January 2021… I am in a pretty good place. So why was 2020 a good year? Well, after talking to various people, I started to journal, writing down things that I am grateful for, things that would make my day great, setting certain intentions for the day and asking questions of myself. We don’t know how strong we are until something external pushes us. But why do we wait until something in life pushes us before we make a change? How many times have you heard someone say my life is so depressing, I don’t know what I want to do with myself or I had to go to hospital because of this or that issue? They do not want or know how to change, but once something really bad happens, they realise they need to change, alternatively they don’t want to change their lifestyle for the better and they spiral.

2020 was a good year because I started to realise I am in control of how I live my life, what I say, what I do and who I am. I started to realise that I have so many good things going on and all the things externally — I can appreciate them or I can ignore them as they may not be something I can really do anything with.

Over the last few years I haven’t made New Year’s Resolutions because I didn’t think I needed to wait for a turn of a new year to make a change for the better. Let’s do it now if things aren’t right.

Health. A few years ago, I went vegan, initially I did it because of my health condition (FYI — It’s called Alagille’s Syndrome — if you wanted to look it up) but then I read all the other benefits for the environment, agriculture, community and many other health benefits that I didn’t realise was the case — and wow, there is a lot. Best decision I ever made, along with giving up alcohol. I feel a lot better, skin feels clearer and I don’t tend to get ill all that often — which is a major bonus.
Home. I finally got my own space, which I can now do with what I please. This has really opened up my enjoyment of interior design. I’ve spent a fair bit of time on Instagram and Pinterest looking at every little thing I might do for my space. Pushing me also to review my travel photography which I have been wanting to print for so long. Here’s your opportunity to print them out and to set up shop… coming very soon. If you’re interested, here’s a teaser of one of my photos from the beautiful country of Japan.
Community. I started to get more involved in a local litter picking group called Roding Rubbish— started by my friend Steven, a school friend I’ve known for over 30 years… how does he put up with me? :) The more I got involved in the litter picking group, the more I started to care about the environment and sustainability. There are so many things that we can do to make our communities and the world around us more self sufficient.
Buying/living sustainably. Being involved in the litter picking group, made me want to read more and more about sustainability. So what have I done? Have stopped buying clothes — I have enough as it is anyway, started to buy soups and shampoo with less crap in it and that doesn’t use sustainable packaging, bought more plants to clean the air within my apartment — who knew that was a thing, when I send out photos or presents I reuse packaging that I have from packages sent to me — all those amazon boxes can be use again, starting to shop at places (In the UK if I could help it) that do things more sustainable and actually care about the community and the environment (I discovered We Earth London, Good Club, Good Things Gifts, Choose Love, Buy Whole Foods Online and also Bookshop — which puts supporting local book shops at the top of their list — unlike Amazon which undercuts all creators by making copycat products for cheaper). Lastly I also discovered Hubhub, who created a greenprint for Britain — and doing great things in local communities up and down the UK. I also backed a project on Kickstarter called Kalea, composting inside the home. My building doesn’t have a green bin so I decided to do something about it. I have already emailed the management company about getting a green bin but this looked like a fantastic solution so that I can start composting indoors.
Cooking. Working from home has also meant cooking more. Feels great that I am not wasting so much money on lunches that can be made for the fraction of the cost at home. Admittedly I do missing going out for dinner trying lovely vegan foods out — particularly missing Leon. I have got a lot more confident as the year has gone by and also tried baking a bit too (big fan of Great British Bake Off) — baked my first cake, made some banana bread (lockdown trend) and utterly delicious sushi. There is still a lot more want to try but there are soo many recipes, cookbooks and youtube cook-a-longs that you can follow. I’ve discovered many different sources of inspiration for cooking vegan — including Dirty Vegan by former Dirty Sanchez frontman Matt Pritchard, Tabitha Brown, Dishoom cookbook, (there are a few vegan recipes in there — if they aren’t, I just swap out the ingredients for something that is vegan — easy), Max La Manna (no waste cooking) and many others on Instagram and Pinterest. I’ve also discovered Sharan. In their own words: “SHARAN, Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature is an organisation devoted to spreading awareness about holistic health and an ecologically sustainable compassionate lifestyle. We believe that all life on the planet is interconnected. By reconnecting we can heal ourselves and the earth.”. Discover how much of our health we are in control of. They have a bunch of fantastic recipes food snacks, lunch, dinner etc — all body healthy and helping in the healing process. Here’s an example of one of their videos called ‘Multiple Sclerosis was scary. To my disbelief, I saw results in 3 months!’. It still amazes me that people go on these short term fad diets to be healthy and then go back to their old ways, that free-from, fruit and veg isle you walk past is way more healthier than the fast food isle you keep picking up from. Eating plant based is what we — in my eyes — were brought on this earth to eat. We are part of the large ecosystem, so we should work with it and not against it for our own greed.
Watch. Watching things that either inspire, educate or entertain in a positive way. I am not a fan of reality TV because let’s face it — most of it is crap. I am more of a fan of stuff like Salvage Hunters, Grand Designs, anything with Richard Ayoade, George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, Sherlock, Poirot, anything with Dave Chapelle, Abstract-The Art of Design, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Cheers, Scrubs, The IT Crowd, The Minimalists, The Trip, Fresh Prince, The Wonder Years (TV series from my youth), Art Attack, Hartbeat, The Joy of Painting by Bob Ross, Pixar films and more. The last couple of years, I have been watching a few things that are more to do with food, environment and sustainability like What The Health, The Game Changers, Kiss the Ground, 2040, Vegan 2020, Cowspiracy and Forks Over Knives. A lot of these have open my eyes to the terrible things that are happening in this world but also what we can do to change ourselves and our local community. 2040 — a film I discovered by chance, it’s about a journey of discovering what our future could look like if we embraced the best of technology available now around the world — makes me optimistic about the future if we have the right people in our government which I don’t think we have currently. I also recently watched all 6 hours of the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 leaders from government, business & civil society talk about their ambitious plans to tackle climate change. It was brilliant to hear all leaders understand what needs to be done and I was particularly pleased to hear leaders talking about working with nature, planting millions of tree, agricultural practices and renewable energy. Not many talking about plant based food, plastic free (recyclable and reusable) packaging and upcycling.

So just looking back on the year, I’ve cooked many things for the first time, I’ve helped clean up the borough, mindset and purpose has become clearer, home has become a special place, my health has improved, my outlook on life is much more positive, I am much more grateful and I am happier. I am trying to make the good things in life a habit — and that’s the important bit. Everything is a work in progress. Short term gains build to a long term gain.

Once it’s a habit — real change can happen.

So if there are things in your life that you don’t like, change now and keep going with it if it is helping you, if you don’t know how to improve a side of your life, speak to someone, speak to me, speak to those experienced in that world, watch positivity enhancing videos on YouTube — there is so much there. Where to start? Read, listen to podcasts/videos and once you start watching life positive videos on YouTube then you will start to be served more.

Here’s a few to get you started:

Things I want to make into a habit is creating art, building an online shop, yoga, meditation and body weight exercising. People I have been following which is helping me with this: Adriene, Simon Sinek, Jay Shetty, Mindvalley, Wim Hof and Jim Kwik . This isn’t a new years resolution but something I’ve been working on for a while. To help with meditation — I listen healing sounds which help me think clearer and set my intentions for the day or week.

I hope this has helped you. Feel free to contact me via my website, twitter or instagram.

Bimal

Why 2020 has been a good year and why I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions

Written by Bimal