January is full of advice about resolve.
Try harder. It’s not that hard to prep lunches on Sunday.
Be more disciplined. You must have 10 minutes a day to meditate.
Do better. You said you weren’t going to drink during the week!
Grip tighter. You’re not doing enough for your team.
This industrialized ‘new year, new you,’ pressure has always driven me nuts. But when it came to the first post of the year, I wasn’t interested in writing about it.
On a dog walk, thinking about why the illusion of control came to me so strongly as the first topic of 2026 for Subtract to Succeed, I got curious about the word resolution itself.
Resolving a conflict doesn’t usually mean forcing it into submission. It means understanding it well enough that the tension loosens.
So I looked up the etymology.
The Latin root of resolve — resolvere — means to loosen, to melt, to untangle.
Not to grip. Not to power through. To loosen, release… and let something soften.
Somewhere along the way (in the late 18th century, according to etymonline.com), resolution became synonymous with willpower. Steely resolve. White-knuckled determination.
And every January, we’re invited to apply that posture to lives that are already exhausted. But what if that’s backwards?
What if real resolution doesn’t start with commitment… but with release?
In this week’s Subtraction Session, I explore how:
the illusion of control drains more energy than we realize
many of our “goals” are really tangled patterns asking to be understood
and why loosening our grip can be more stabilizing than holding on
Want to jump around?
0:00–6:30 — How the Subtraction Sessions work (for newcomers)
6:30–12:30 — The illusion of control & circles of influence
12:30–end — The original meaning of resolution (feel free to jump ahead if you’re here for the etymology excitement 🤓)
This isn’t about doing less because you care less.
It’s about seeing clearly enough to choose what’s actually yours to carry.
If January feels heavy instead of hopeful, you’re not broken. You might just be trying to use the wrong meaning of resolve.
And finally, if you’re new here, a few notes on our flow.
Mondays are for the Subtraction Scenario: a short essay (with audio as an option) exploring one thing we might experiment with letting go of. Paid subscribers get 4 practices to choose from: a 60-second quickie; set of deeper reflection questions; a paired exercise to do with a colleague or friend; and an AI prompt for those days when you need a kickstart to your thinking.
Wednesdays are for the Subtraction Session, a video with me and sometimes an expert guest, in which we go deeper into the week’s idea, with a story, an extra tool or framework, or (this week) an etymological surprise.
You can engage with either post or both. There’s no required order or forced fun here! But I do invite you to play along and see what helps. Keep on rollin’,
Nell
