Which celebrity habits should go on your New Year's resolution list?
I’m usually cynical when it comes to the habits of successful people. Especially celebrities. Basically you have to graft, or get lucky, to get anywhere in life. So isn't unfashionable, old fashioned hard work more likely to be the force behind their meteoric rise than, say, the ice bath I could purchase with one click from Amazon?
Speaking plainly, however, I am knackered. Isn’t everyone by this stage in the year? It leaves us receptive to the sort of self-help waffle that promises to transform our lives and 2025 for the better. I do want to be more successful! I want to be the type of person who strides into the near year with purpose. Surely there’s no harm hedging my bets, and trying some of these supposedly transformative habits touted by celebrities? So I gave a bunch of them a whirl, to establish which might make it onto my new year’s resolution list.
‘The early bird catches the worm’ with Kim Kardashian and Richard Branson
I get up at 6.30am most days. Sadly, this is not out of determination to succeed, but rather the combined results of menopause and eleven years of motherhood. However, when I search ‘waking up times of successful people’ they range from anytime between 2.30am- 6am.
A study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology also revealed that early risers are more proactive than those who get up later in the day. It makes sense. Getting up early has to be an effective way of cramming more into the day. So I decide to try getting up even earlier, at 5.30am.
The first thing I realise is that there’s a big difference between getting up early and GETTING UP AT NIGHT. It’s pitch dark. The second is that the first person up is also the first person to face the chaos of the kitchen. If that person is female, then they will probably need to unload the dishwasher and feed the cats before they can start emailing other successful people. I spend five minutes trying to get the cat bowls clean, then I find that we’ve run out of coffee. I put all the dishes away.
It’s almost 6am. Celebrities would have staff that would do all the drudge work so they could get on with their journalling. Instead I’m stuck in domestic overwhelm until my youngest comes down and declares she wants cereal.
As the week goes on, I realise I need to act more like a Tech Bro CEO and ignore the petty demands of animals and children. By day seven, I am ignoring the dishes and writing emails first thing. Rising at this time of the day means I can write entirely undisturbed. Except for the cats sitting sadly at my feet, their tummies rumbling. It definitely makes me more productive, but it also means I fall asleep during dinner.
2025 Resolution? Yes
Sweat it out with Mark Wahlberg
The actor Mark Wahlberg does not only get up early. After rising at 2.30am (yes, you read that right), he then prays until 3.15, has a pre-workout breakfast (involving something called ‘steel-cut oats’), before kicking off his workout at 3.40am.
Grouped together, these habits read like a bizarre punishment for wayward teens. The early morning exercise, however, sounds reasonable. Partly because – rejoice – I already do this, and know that, at the very least, it makes me feel better (its impact on my success is yet to be established).
I’ve long been aware that movement helps me fight stress, gets me out of my head and also floods me with feel-good hormones like dopamine. About 12 months ago, however, I was going through a difficult time at work and decided to step it up a level with a radical regime I call… ‘running around the block.’
Okay, so it isn’t rocket science. First thing in the morning, before I do anything else, (or at least, as soon as parenting allows), I put my trainers on and… run around the neighbourhood a bit. I listen to 90s hip-hop. I don’t get up like Wahlberg at 2.30am or eat oats made out of metal, but it really does make a perceptible difference, helping me shake off any morning anxiety and feel more positive about the day ahead. It’s also free, and pretty easy to implement. Win win.
2025 resolution? Yes (but not at 3.40am)
Being Grateful with Arianna Huffington
“I love the idea of starting the day and ending the day with three things I’m grateful for,” Arianna Huffington once said in an interview with US broadcaster CNBC. Huffington is co-founder of The Huffington Post, founder and CEO of Thrive Global, author of fifteen books, has featured in Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list… Basically, she is wildly successful by any imaginable measure, so I decide to follow suit.
I will list three things every day that I’m happy about. Apparently these don’t have to be massive things, (just as well, really). Huffington does, however, recommend that you share this list with friends, so I send a WhatsApp to one of my closest mates.
‘I’m grateful for the oat cappuccino I had this morning,’ it reads. ‘What?’ she replies. ‘I’m also grateful for the pie I made for dinner last night even if everyone said it tasted watery.’ ‘I think you’re messaging the wrong person,’ she types. ‘I am also grateful because you are a very good friend,’ I reply. She doesn’t send a message back. I worry I may have jeopardised our friendship.
Does gratitude work? Arguably yes. Our brains have a negative bias, meaning we are impacted more powerfully by negative experiences than positive ones. Any practice that helps us re-frame our lives and notice the good is helpful. In fact, I found it genuinely helpful late at night, a time when I tend to think about all the things that have gone wrong. Now, instead, I try and think about the things that went well instead.
2025 resolution? Yes (but if you’re messaging your friends with your gratitude list, warn them of your plan before doing so).
Skipping with Miquita Oliver
I love Miquita Oliver. I think I would do just about anything she recommended. Unfortunately, that's skipping. She describes as her ‘active meditation’ and is so enthusiastic about its benefits that she built a community - ‘Skip School’ - around it.
I buy a skipping rope off Amazon. It arrives needing batteries and with instructions that are very small, so small that even my 11 year old can’t read them. However I persevere, and power up the skipping rope after a quick run around the block.
My skip school experience is regrettably short lived however. I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that, following two fairly traumatic vaginal births, skipping and I might not be the best of friends.
2025 resolution? Not for me.
Cold water therapy with Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga once shared that her post-gig routine involves an ice bath, then a hot bath, then something called a compression suit, packed with ice. The famous health and wellness expert Wim Hof advises cold water therapy for a whole host of ills. Some of the benefits listed on his website include better immunity, quicker metabolic rates, and less depression. In the midst of the germiest of all months, this is persuasive, so I decide to start with a cold shower.
Apparently, you should aim for about 10 minutes of cold exposure a week. Since my other success habits have left me brimming with self-belief, I decide that I will step straight into a 10-minute shower.
It’s 7am, I’ve run around the block several times and am ready for my reward which is usually a nice hot, steamy shower. Instead, icy water shoots out. Every instinct tells me to step away. I think how my body knows best. Maybe I should listen to my body? I hold one arm under the freezing water for 5 seconds. It’s all I can manage. This arm will now be more successful than the other one, and I worry about how that will play out in my future.
Will this freezing arm be getting books published and appearing on talk shows without me? I then think about how lucky we are to have hot water. I decide to put this on my gratitude list.
2025 resolution? Not for me.
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