2025: Foundations for a new year

The new year is often a time filled with lofty goals and resolutions for significant changes. It is a time for refreshed energy and positive outlooks and vision for the potential of what could be. But the challenge lies in how we maintain those intentions beyond the first couple of weeks.
Sometimes this is because the change is too drastic, sometimes it is because the goal is huge and aspirational, but doesn’t come with a guide for how to break that mission into smaller pieces. The real answer is in developing small reliable habits that can be regularly implemented.
And this is an idea backed by science. Building regular habits creates the foundations for lasting behavioral changes. It is about creating systems that transform the way we do things into reliable habits – rather than relying on quick fixes. A quick fix is easy to ignore when things get hard. A habit is a system for change.
Having some time away from the pressures of everyday life can inspire us to set our sights on a full fresh start. A desire to look, act, behave, and exist in a certain way that creates a sense of pressure; a pressure that can become overwhelming when things get back into the previous state of being.
Instead of chasing a big goal – create a habit for a small repeatable action.
Rather than deciding to write and record a whole album, build a habit for 10 mins every day working on some musical ideas. Make it something sustainable. Something that can fit into your schedule, and something you will put into your calendar so you turn up every day. It is a bonus if it contains elements of play.
Make your new habit the smallest useful act you can. Something that can be done in a few minutes. Those few minutes done regularly add up over time. By regularly incorporating positive behaviour into our habitual practice, we make cumulative change over time.
You can explore the process of linking your new habit to a specific situation each day. That situation then can become a trigger. Every day I will read for 5 minutes before I have my coffee. Every day before lunch I will do 5 mins of creative writing. This little act tied with a regular trigger can help us to build the habit.
And if you happen to miss the trigger, don’t be hard on yourself, let it pass and resume the habit the next day. It all counts. The regular engagement creates the positive shift.
Ultimately it is about routine. Having a regular routine is a process of habit. The morning coffee to start the day is part of that routine – a morning ritual. The habit can become the default response. The thing we just do. So then if we can increase our regularity in engaging with something like creativity, then we can utilise that to help in knowing how to deal with stress, to encourage imagination and innovation, and to feel empathy and connection.
It is all about having regular engagement with arts in your daily life. Building that new habit to embrace the benefits. Studies show that: “arts engagement has diverse and tangible effects on health, from supporting cognitive development and protecting against cognitive decline, to reducing symptoms of mental illness and enhancing wellbeing, reducing pain and stress…, reducing loneliness, and maintaining physical functioning”.
So as you move forward into 2025 perhaps we can set aside the resolutions and commit to embedding some new habits in our daily lives. And for Creative Waikato we highly recommend having some creative activity as part of those new habits.
The benefits are exciting!