We are all in for having New Year’s resolutions. In fact, goals should be continuously set up, revised and optimised to help us understand our growth. Personally, I believe in progress over perfection and goals are there to guide you along the way, especially when you feel a bit lost.
Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.
Though I regularly review my goals, I decided to incorporate more intentional goals for this year and really focus on designing my life around my core values: integrity and sustainability.
What are your goals for 2025?
If you are looking for inspiration, I made a list of 25 goals for 2025 you can borrow or steal and apply to your life in the upcoming year.
23 New Year's resolutions for 2025
Here are our favourite goals to give a go in the upcoming year. We divided them into categories and we suggest picking up one of each to start with. After a month, audit to see how you are doing. If you feel like it, take up a new goal.
New Year’s Resolutions For You
There are countless benefits of walking. Other than the positive impact it has on the planet by reducing the noise, air pollution, and emissions that are contributing to global warming, it is also great for your health and your wallet.
Need more reasons to walk? Researchers found that walking improves your:
• Physical health
• Cognitive performance
• Mental health
• Creativity
If walking is not an option, consider alternatives including cycling, scooters or public transportation. That’s by far our favourite and most achievable New Year’s resolution.
Did you know that impulse shopping is triggered by our emotions rather than reasoning? Oftentimes, it’s a result of our emotions, past experiences or urgency falsely imposed by an irresistible ‘limited-time offer’.
Now that you know it, learn how to deal with it. You can do so by unsubscribing from offer email and unfollowing retailers on social media, deleting your saved credit cards and removing your search history and cookies (so it’s more difficult to access the site and complete the purchase), delaying the purchase by a day to see if you still need it or planning your budget and preparing a shopping list before you start.
We are exposed to poisonous chemicals all the time. They are not only bad for our planet, but also for our bodies. Once you use up your toiletries, look for ones that are toxic-free. Or even better, start making your own DIY products like toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, scrub or body lotion.
Bicarbonate soda (baking soda) and vinegar are a natural and eco-friendly cleaning duo, ideal for tackling household grime. Baking soda’s mild abrasiveness makes it effective for scrubbing surfaces, while vinegar’s acidic properties dissolve grease, grime, and mineral deposits. When combined, they create a fizzy reaction that helps lift dirt and debris from hard-to-reach areas, such as drains or grout lines. Use them together to clean sinks, unclog drains, or freshen laundry without the need for harsh chemicals, making them a perfect addition to a sustainable cleaning routine.
New Year’s Resolutions For Your Home
There are countless benefits to this. Not only you will be able to buy fresh produce sourced locally and therefore, maintain nutritious levels, but the chances also are, that they are grown by local producers who are committed to not using harmful pesticides.
More so, the produce tends to travel shorter distances therefore minimising the pollution associated with transportation and staying fresher longer. Win, win, win.
Minimise your takeouts and eating out for home-cooked meals. This not only minimises food waste but also supports your healthy nutrition as it allows you to pick and choose ingredients.
You can also introduce batch cooking and plan your meal for the week ahead.
Eating seasonally supports overall nutrition and is good for the planet. Seasonal food also tends to be fresher, taste better and is more nutritious as it grows in natural habitat and is harvested at the right time.
Vegetarian Society prepared this handy list to know which fruits and veg are in season in the UK and when.
Do everything to minimise disposable plastic and plastic in general in your life. It’s toxic for you and your family, it pollutes the planet and it’s not even fashionable anymore. If you haven’t done so yet, gift yourself a refillable water bottle – be it glass or stainless steel (Chilly’s is my favourite) and a reusable coffee cup.
From air quality, to mould, to single-use plastic and cleaning products.
I cannot stress enough how harmful your living environment can be to your health. Invest in a smart meter that measures humidity and air quality. It will help you identify issues that you didn’t know existed and guide your decisions on better house insulation.
Moreover, chemicals in your cleaning products can be incredibly harmful and some can cause chronic breathing issues, skin rashes, migraines and even cancer. (source)
Replace them with homemade cleaning solutions using vinegar or castile soap. For a handful of recipes, check this article.
Get a specialist to help you with this one.
While upgrading your home to run on green power sounds like the answer to all your problems, there are also many other ways you can reduce your current bills and energy consumption with what you already have.
There is no better way to monitor your energy consumption than getting an instant overview of your energy consumption. It will not only help you identify the leaks but it will also help you reduce your bills.
Energy audits and smart meters are imperative for this, however, you can also do it yourself by identifying heat leaks and sealing them, replacing your lightbulbs with efficient LEDs ones or using a thermostat to manage your heating system.
New Year’s Resolutions For Your Community
Join your local community groups and do something good for the neighbourhood you live in. Whether it is a beach cleanup, planting trees in the park, volunteering at a food bank or promoting your local baker on your social media – doing good for your community can go a long way.
Check your local Facebook groups and Meetups for community events and if you don’t any, how about organising one?
A random act of kindness not only helps the cause or those around you but first and foremost, lifts your spirits.
So get involved and do something good today – help the elderly carry their groceries home, donate clothes to those who need them, buy a homeless person a meal or visit a hospice.
Need more ideas? Visit the Random Acts Of Kindness website.
Sustainability also means being supportive of your community.
A single smile goes a long way, an innocent how are you can be the only opportunity for a passerby to speak to someone that day and a how are you, really can save one’s life. With so many stories of people taking away their own lives, let’s be mindful that everyone has their heavy lifting to do and we should be there for one another to offer comfort and listen.
Sustainable New Year’s Resolutions For The Planet
Audit your regular waste to see how you can optimise and minimise your waste. To do so, examine a few days worth of waste and see what are the biggest contributors and how you can minimise them using the 5 R’s of zero waste (point 17).
You can also do it at your office.
Did you hear about the 5 principles of living a zero-waste life? They are:
- Refuse what you don’t need or no longer need. You can use platforms like Vinted or OLX
- Reduce what you don’t use and what you waste (i.e. single-waste plastic)
- Reuse what you can and as long as you can. If you don’t need it – swap it or donate it.
- Recycle what cannot be refused, reduced or reused
- Rot what you have got left. You can use it for composting too.
Composting is a process of turning food scraps and leftovers into usable nutritious soil.
If you are new to this, I recommend this guide on how to get started with composting and what can be composted.
It is so satisfying to be able to grow your food, believe me. And it’s even more satisfying to grow it. If you don’t have a spacious garden to grow your produce, use small pots and see how you get on. Here is a helpful list of fruits and vegetables to try growing at home.
France has recently introduced a ban on short-haul flights on routes that can be taken by train. And rightly so. Trains are not only more eco-friendly, they also give you more flexibility with travel arrangements and take you straight to the city centre.
They are also better than cars as they don’t get stuck in traffic. Those who commute to London every day (or any other big city for that matter), know it well.
Make travelling by trains your first option.
Whether you have an endless list of destinations to visit or one big holiday planned for the upcoming year, try to make it as planet-friendly as possible. In general, this means:
- travelling locally if possible
- using eco-friendly carriers, by land or use airlines that offset their carbon footprint
- travelling light
When visiting a new place, make sure your choices contribute to their economy and out local communities first.
- Stay in an accommodation that is centrally located (within walking distance from the main attractions on your list) and makes sustainability their priority
- Eat local and seasonal food
- Ditching single-plastic for reusable accessories
- Instead of bringing all your baby and travel gear, check if you can rent it instead. Check websites like Babonbo for baby rentals.
There are plenty of organisations trying to make a change. Support one of your choices and make monthly contributions – this could be as little as the value of a takeout coffee.
Never too many trees out there. If you don’t have an outdoor space to plant a tree around you, use a service of one of the organisations that plant trees on the contributor’s behalf.
Be more intentional and mindful with everything you do.
Awareness is the key component to applying any changes in your life so keep that in mind when you are making any decisions.
And a bonus one: Be mindful of your time.
Though it might not fall under ‘sustainability’, time is the only resource we never get back and we spend a lot of it taking up meaningless activities (i.e. doomscrolling) or entertaining relationships that no longer serve us. Therefore, do yourself a favour and be more mindful with your time and I promise you – you won’t regret it.
And remember… Progress over perfection.
Take it easy on yourself and start with small steps as that is how you can make sure you achieve your goal. Here’s a little graphic that perfectly presents that →
