Try Declarations, Not Resolutions, for 2026
I’m trying an alternative to New Year's resolutions this year: New Year’s declarations.
Happy New Year!
At this time of year, people often make resolutions—specific commitments to maintain a particular habit or achieve a particular goal. This can be valuable, but a common and crucial reason why many people quickly fail to achieve their New Year’s resolutions is that they have focused on a particular concrete goal, not the habits and principles that are prerequisites for achieving such goals.
For that reason, I’m trying an alternative this year: New Year’s declarations. These are not resolutions to achieve a particular goal, but rather declarations of the principles I plan to uphold in the new year (and thereafter). Rational, life-serving principles have the advantage that they remain relevant even if our concrete goals change. A person may set a resolution to build muscle, but that’ll only work if he also commits to the principle that he should make decisions based on his rational values rather than his feelings when he doesn’t want to do it. If he later decides that going to bed at a fixed time is a higher priority, the principle still applies.
Such declarations (and resolutions) don’t need to be made at New Year. Earlier this year, while I was on vacation in Slovenia, I decided to write out a full declaration of my principles that I could pin on my fridge and re-read regularly. The reason for doing it then was that I had just made a number of new integrations and realizations about how I need to apply my fundamental values in how I behave. The advantage of New Year, however, is that it offers an easy-to-remember landmark start date accompanied by a general atmosphere of renewal and opportunity.
The full declaration I mentioned—which I named “The Ljubljana Declaration” after the city I was staying in, in part to make it memorable for me—is not what I’m proposing for New Year. That declaration (which I’ll include below) was an extensive codification of all the principles I need to embody in my life. What I’m proposing for New Year, on the other hand, is a few simple, one-sentence declarations of key principles that you’ve recently learned or that you’ve realized you don’t apply as much as you should in life.
For me, a few of my New Year’s declarations are:
I will consistently strive to maintain full consciousness of my emotions and the reasons—conscious and subconscious—for all of my desires, emotional responses, and actions.
I will evaluate others solely on the extent to which they embody in action the rational principles on which human life depends and which I have chosen to uphold, not on their personal loyalty or disloyalty to me.
I will consciously acknowledge and speak aloud to myself every time I observe myself desiring something or acting in a way which is contrary to my rational values.
If you read the full Ljulbljana Declaration below, you will see how these declarations integrate with it. It may be that the specific principles I’ve highlighted for my 2026 declarations are not areas you need to focus on, but I hope that you will, in reading the full declaration, identify some areas which you would benefit from focusing on more in the new year.
I wish you best success with all your rational endeavours in 2026.
New Declaration of Principles
“The Ljubljana Declaration”
This document records my new commitment to absolute objectivity throughout my decision making.
Maintaining these commitments will be difficult until they are fully habituated. In time, that will bring happiness, success, and greater ease of decision making. The path of deviating from these principles will bring pain and unending difficulty.
Rationality
I will always ask “what are the facts?” That includes the facts that give rise to my feelings, the facts of what I’m feeling about any given stimulus, the facts that give rise to any need or desire I’m experiencing, and the facts that support and oppose my view on any question.
I will only take actions that I have rigorously identified will objectively advance my ability to live as a reality-oriented rational being. My ultimate loyalty is always to reality, and by extension to my own life and rational life in general.
Productivity
I will always ensure that I am producing rational values with my time and energy. I will not enter into relationships of any kind wherein I am (in the long range) extracting more value than I produce.
I will not give to others that which they have not objectively earned from me through spiritual or material value (reasonable assumption of potential value with strangers notwithstanding).
Pride
I will derive my sense of self-worth from the rational values I produce (physical and spiritual) and the ways those benefit my life and others who are a rational value to me.
I will only derive self-esteem from the evaluation of or connection with others when those facts are consequences and evidence of my upholding of the values expressed in this declaration.
Justice
I will hold myself and others to their active embodiment of (not expressed commitment to) the values expressed in this declaration, respectfully of others’ contexts. I will not allow my desire for others’ validation or acceptance, nor my resentment over their fair treatment of me, to distort my judgment of their character. Nor will I allow others’ judgment, validation, or rejection to inform my own self-opinion unless I can clearly identify the objective facts it signals with my own reason.
Independence
I will make all decisions according to the standard of my own life and values, never for the purposes of conforming to or differentiating from others.
I will recognize that my internal state is both my own responsibility and ultimately the only thing I have full control over. I will take ownership of my feelings, not blame others for them, and prioritize internal rather than external solutions to unhappiness.
Honesty
I will face and record all of my recurring feelings, irrational desires, and psychological pain points. In conflicts with others and in my day to day life, I will analyse my own actions and words objectively, honestly acknowledging the emotional motivations to regard them and the words and actions of others in a way favourable to me. I will always maintain consciousness of my emotional state and how it influences my ideas.
I will state clearly to myself before entering into, upgrading, or downgrading any relationship, my objective, values-based reasons for doing so and the emotions that may also be motivating it, probing the root causes of those emotions. With younger women, I will also regularly do this with our conversations and casual interactions. I will regularly ask the questions: “What is my true motivation here?” “What feelings am I not acknowledging here?”
Integrity
I will only state as a value that which I practice as a value. If I identify myself deviating from any of the above principles, I will not claim to uphold those values.
Where my desires or emotions deviate from my rational values, I will write down that discord and work to identify its roots. I will not pursue, even in fantasy or seemingly inconsequential ways, desires that deviate from my rational values. Even small amounts of disintegrity signify the abandonment of the principle.
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Very good idea. I still find it useful to set specific goals, so I would take this as an addition, not a replacement for resolutions. The publication of my book on debating, for example, was a goal I set myself at new year last year, and I finished it by December. This year it is to finish my new novel Vegan Slaughter.