London life coach and Enneagram practitioner Hans Schumann suggests that New Year’s resolutions can serve as a powerful re-energising point in the year and help us begin a new cycle of growth.
As another year comes to a close, the familiar debate appears on social media. Do New Year’s resolutions matter, or should we finally admit they don’t work and stop bothering?
My view is simple: New Year’s resolutions do matter if we use them wisely. Even if we abandon them a few months later, they can still play an important role in our personal growth.
Here’s why:
The Law of Seven
I tend to look at growth through the lens of the Enneagram model and a teaching that sits underneath it, often referred to as the Law of Seven. This law suggests that meaningful change unfolds in cycles rather than straight lines, and that every cycle moves through seven distinct stages:
- Initial impulse: Something new begins. An intention, need or question arises and sets the process in motion.
- Engagement with context: The impulse meets reality. Resources, people and conditions are brought into relationship.
- Mobilisation of effort: Energy is organised and directed. Action becomes concrete and momentum builds.
- Reorientation and correction: The process adapts to feedback. Assumptions are revised and effort is redirected.
- Consolidation and development: Work continues with greater stability. Skills, structures or understanding deepen.
- Integration and completion: The work is brought to a close. Results are articulated, embodied or delivered.
- Transmission and renewal: What has been learned is integrated and made available for a new cycle at a higher level.
But here is the catch: this is not a straightforward linear journey. The Law of Seven suggests that there will be ups and downs, and that you will need to re-energise the process at several points.
Let’s face it: motivation drops
We don’t just set a goal, apply effort, and steadily improve until we get there. Instead, energy naturally drops at predictable points along the way. Momentum weakens, and the process risks drifting off course unless an additional impulse is introduced.
We’ve all experienced this. You start a new fitness routine, a healthier way of eating, a meditation practice or a business project with genuine enthusiasm. A few weeks or months later, motivation wanes, and it suddenly requires far more effort to keep going.
When this happens, many of us turn the frustration inward. We judge ourselves for lacking discipline or willpower. Through the lens of the Law of Seven, however, this drop in energy isn’t a personal failure. It’s a natural part of the process.
And importantly, it doesn’t mean we have to give up on our goals.
The importance of “shock points”
This is where the idea of “shock points” becomes relevant. In the language of the Law of Seven, a shock point is an intervention that reintroduces energy into the system. It can be an event, a decision, a change of structure or external support that helps us move past a predictable dip and continue the cycle.
If we want to succeed with any meaningful goal, it helps to anticipate these dips and consciously plan ways to re-energise ourselves.
New Year’s Eve as a “shock point”
For me, New Year’s Eve functions as one such shock point. You could argue that it’s an arbitrary date, and in many ways it is. But it works well for me because it coincides with the end of an annual cycle and takes me out of my daily rut.
At the end of each year, I deliberately pause. I reflect on what has gone well, what hasn’t and which goals quietly fell away. I look at where my energy dropped, what got in the way, and whether the goals I set still feel relevant. From there, I explore what I want to adjust, simplify or approach differently in the year ahead. If you want to try this for yourself, you can download my free annual planner workbook where I set out the entire process.
As part of this ritual, I reconnect with my deeper values and longer-term life vision. Sometimes I recommit to existing goals, sometimes I let them go and sometimes I redesign the way I’m trying to reach them. I also create practical conditions that support the next cycle. For example, I usually refrain from alcohol in January and February to create more mental space and clarity. That, too, is a form of shock point.
Of course, I don’t maintain peak motivation all year long. I don’t know anyone who does. My own diligence and energy fluctuate as the year progresses. The difference is that I don’t expect constant momentum anymore.
The more interesting question for me is this: what would happen if I didn’t introduce any shock points at all? My sense is that growth would slow dramatically, or even reverse, not because I lack good intentions, but because energy naturally dissipates without renewal.
Seen this way, New Year’s resolutions are not promises we must keep at all costs. They are invitations. They mark a moment where we pause, take stock, and intentionally step into a new cycle of growth.
What to do when your commitment weakens
New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be the only shock point. If we notice our commitment weakening at any time of the year, we can consciously introduce other re-energising shock points.
Using fitness as an example, that might mean hiring a personal coach, joining a group, signing up for an event, changing a routine that has become stale or even taking a deliberate break before recommitting in a different way. The key is not to force ourselves through resistance, but to work with the rhythm of change.
Even if New Year’s resolutions “fail” in the traditional sense, they can still do their job: re-energising us, reconnecting us to what matters, and helping us begin again with a little more awareness than last time.
If you feel inspired to start the new year powerfully, you can download my free annual planner here.
I wish you a fantastic 2026!!
