As the year ends, UAE residents share how creative habits, mindset shifts and practical strategies helped them adapt, sustain and achieve their New Year resolutions instead of abandoning them midway.
As 2025 draws to a close, meet UAE residents who successfully reworked and mastered their New Year goals
As 2025 began, Saudi rapper and comedian Amy Roko made an unusual promise to herself: she would care for her body as if it were a one-of-a-kind luxury item — precious, limited, and worth protecting. With that mindset, she committed to exercising four times a week.
She followed through for the entire year, crediting her success to building microhabits and turning everyday actions into something enjoyable. “I didn’t write ‘go to the gym,’ I wrote ‘touch the gym door,’” she explained. “That tiny step somehow led me to train four times a week. I also romanticised everything — even drinking water felt like a K-drama scene before an emotional confession.”
Every January, ambitious resolutions are made, only to be abandoned weeks later as motivation fades. Gym passes go unused and planners remain blank. Yet a small group of UAE residents discovered simple but effective ways to stay on track — and actually followed through on their goals.
For Dubai-based Riya Awtaney, motivation came in the form of a deal she made with herself. Her aim was to walk 10,000 steps daily, and the reward was unrestricted phone use.
“Walking became my time to scroll, send voice notes and shop online,” she said. “If I wanted screen time or to add items to my cart, I had to earn it with steps — and surprisingly, that trade-off worked.”
On days when she fell behind, she improvised. “Some nights ended with me pacing the living room or walking the building corridors over and over, completely determined to hit my goal,” she said.
A mindset shift
For some, success had less to do with physical habits and more with mental clarity. Alifa Barnes, Marketing Manager at Dubai Holding Entertainment, didn’t focus on a traditional resolution, but on living with intention.
“I kept asking myself, ‘Am I choosing this deliberately, or am I just reacting?’” she said. “That question helped me slow down, make thoughtful decisions and stay connected to what really mattered.”
Her most powerful strategy was releasing guilt. “If I noticed myself slipping into old habits, I didn’t criticise myself,” she said. “I paused, reset, and made a better choice.”
A similar mindset helped content creator Aastha Kurup, whose goals for 2025 included posting consistently and buying her first car. Her biggest breakthrough came when she stopped viewing consistency as a flawless, uninterrupted streak.
“People mess up once and then mentally abandon the whole year,” she said. “I learned to restart immediately instead of waiting for some perfect reset moment. That mindset spilled into other areas of my life too.”
She also planned her year in three-month blocks rather than trying to perfect a 12-month plan, allowing her to balance university, her first job and creative work without exhaustion.
Rethinking resolutions
Former Australian Paralympic swimmer and New Balance ambassador Jessica Smith said she doesn’t subscribe to resolutions in the traditional sense. “I’ve always been goal-oriented and curious about learning along the way,” she said. “But in 2025, the guiding principle for me was consistency.”
She noted that advocacy work is often slow and unseen, making long-term commitment challenging without immediate recognition. “Consistency isn’t about motivation or being perfect,” she said. “It’s about making daily choices that reflect your values.”
That steady approach helped her take on multiple roles, including Accessibility Advisor with Dubai Airports and Sports Ambassador for Dubai Sports Council.
Speaker and author Dr Katherine Iscoe offered a more critical view of New Year’s resolutions, describing them not as dreams but as apologies. “They’re apologies for not being disciplined enough, fit enough or productive enough,” she said. “We present them as growth, but they’re really year-long promises to become someone else.”
True transformation, she explained, doesn’t come from fixing oneself to earn worthiness, but from self-respect — choosing goals that align with who people already are, not who they feel pressured to become.
Across these stories, a common pattern emerges: successful resolutions were built on flexibility rather than force. Instead of rigid rules, each individual designed systems that worked with their lifestyle, not against it. Small, repeatable actions replaced grand, intimidating goals, making consistency feel achievable rather than exhausting. By reframing success as showing up imperfectly but repeatedly, these UAE residents removed the pressure that often derails resolutions early in the year. Their experiences suggest that long-term change is less about discipline and more about designing habits that feel rewarding, personal and sustainable.
Behavioural experts often note that habits stick when they are tied to emotion, identity and immediate reward. In these cases, movement became entertainment, intention replaced guilt, and consistency was separated from perfection. This psychological shift helped participants stay engaged even during busy or stressful periods. By lowering the barrier to action and attaching positive meaning to small wins, they avoided the all-or-nothing mindset that typically leads to burnout. These strategies highlight how understanding one’s own motivation patterns can be more effective than relying solely on willpower.
As another year approaches, these stories offer a refreshing alternative to traditional resolution-setting. Instead of ambitious overhauls, they point toward gentler, more realistic commitments rooted in self-awareness. Whether through microhabits, mental resets or values-based decision-making, each approach shows that progress does not require dramatic transformation. For many, the real victory of 2025 was not ticking off a checklist, but learning how to keep going without quitting. That lesson may prove more valuable than any single resolution in the year ahead.
