A remarkable autobiography by Anthony Inglis, the English conductor and musicologist, is titled, “Sit Down, Stop Waving Your Arms About!” Quite so.
This admonition occurred while Inglis was conducting a musical. Someone sitting in the front row tapped him on the shoulder and told him to sit down and stop waving his arms about.
My admonition to you for the new year is to sit down and stop stressing yourself.
We are plagued with the idea of stress, and yet we start the new year with resolutions. We order a raft of these stress-making endeavors.
Want a stress-free new year? Stop your New Year’s resolutions right now.
Do you need to tell yourself that you will stay on your diet? No. You won’t anyway.
Do you need to set a goal of going to the gym five times a week? No. You won’t get to Planet Fitness more than once or twice, in the whole year.
So, your desk looks like a dump, leave it alone. You will promise yourself that for the first time ever you will get organized in 2026. You won’t. So why get stressed about it?
You have promised yourself that this year you are going to improve your mind and read 20 great books. You won’t. Best case, you will flip through a James Patterson thriller or a Danielle Steel romance. Maybe the detective novel you purchased at an airport will make it to your nightstand, alongside the classic you plan to read when you get around to it. That is never, so get rid of that reproving volume. Give it to charity. You will shed stress and feel good at the same time by doing that.
Sloth clothed as virtue is so, so stress-relieving.
Put aside the stress of resolutions in the new year and relax into a year of self-indulgence.
If a work colleague comes over to you and starts talking about productivity, cross your arms, sit down and, if your system allows, break wind.
Approach work as a card-carrying slough-off. In the Soviet Union, which was supposed to be the “workers’ paradise,” workers used to say, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Good on them.
If striving is pointless, stop striving. Give it a rest.
I suggest there is a terrible national lack of malaise. At every turn, we are urged to learn more, work harder and innovate, innovate, innovate. You don’t need innovation to have a second helping, open a beer or take the day off.
You may need to be a little innovative, explaining why you aren’t at work. But that isn’t so hard: Claim a mental health day. Particularly if you are well and fit enough to enjoy it at the beach, at a movie theater or snuggled down into your bed.
If people are telling you to “lean in” and “try harder or the Chinese will get ahead,” go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant and wonder at the number of dishes which can be prepared almost instantly — none of which you would cook. Then conclude that the Chinese have already won and stop stressing.
Think back to when we stressed mightily about the Japanese and the Germans beating us at everything. Then enjoy a suffusing, warm gladness when you realize that all that leaning in and trying harder hasn’t helped them beat us. Maybe we should have a national academy for failing upward.
Lloyd Kelly, a fine artist and a friend, teaches Tai Chi in Louisville, Kentucky, particularly in one of the city’s hospitals. He advises his students — some of whom are in wheelchairs — to stay within their comfort level, “to give just 70%.”
There is something beautiful about that admonishment at a time when people are stressed out and society is mindlessly urging you to struggle, to achieve, to conquer.
Here, then, is a resolution you can keep: I am only going to give a 70% effort. That way, perchance, you will have a great new year by default.
