Caroline Phillips’s Ultimate New Year’s Resolutions

So you want to begin the New Year with new resolutions? Well, how about getting a new life, new family and new face? Not to mention some new artwork. Read on for Caroline Phillips’s ultimate quirky guide to making the year ahead one to really remember and love.

Caroline Phillips’s New Year’s Resolutions: 8 Ways To Start Fresh In 2024

New Body: The Peak Fitness Club and Spa

For the ultimate wellness experience

All good intentions (and years) start with a new health club membership. But this is one that you’ll want to stick with for decades. Think brilliant classes, including belly dancing, tip-top spa and hands down London’s best indoor pool— huge, cleansed sans chemicals and bathed in natural light. It’s almost worth joining just for the members-only lift that whizzes up the side of the building with its bird’s- eye view of London. And even more so for The Peak private health club with its wow fitness centre and ooh-ah panoramas. £500 for a month or £5,250 per annum. jumeirah.com

NEW LIFE: The Hoffman Process

For personal growth

Yearning to feel all new inside? Hurry to Broughton Sanctuary, Yorkshire, one of the world’s leading retreat centres, for this one-week, personal growth journey that allows you to find compassion and forgiveness for yourself and others, start acting from spiritual attunement rather than old patterns, and get the life you want. Opt for a four-poster and then meet for turbo-charged emotional healing amid antiques, classical busts and 16th century loveliness. No wonder psychologist Oliver James, Sienna Miller and CEOs swear by it. It refreshes the parts other methods cannot reach. From £3,700. hoffmaninstitute.co.uk

NEW FAMILY: Genealogist Michael Waas and graphologist Tracey Trussell

For finding family and then understanding them

If you want a new family, then divorce or turn to polygamy. Or just get a new (and famous?) famiglia, perhaps using the lead genealogists from Who Do You Think You Are? If you’re after Jewish roots, start with Michael Waas genealogist extraordinaire. He will help with all aspects of family history research leaving no stone unturned. Are you from a military background? The sleuths affiliated with the Imperial War Museum, couldn’t be more helpful. When you’ve collected your relations – including dead ancestors – hire ace graphologist Tracey Trussell to check out their characters (and your compatibility!), merely by studying their handwriting – as unique as our DNA – and the formation of their letters. She’s uncannily accurate. hollander-waas.com | handright.co.uk

NEW ARTWORK: Lily Lewis

For blissy art and poetry

What happens when you combine beauty, brilliance and talent? Then add in wit and wisdom? Lily Lewis, artist, writer and poet, that’s what. Snap up one of her artworks – it’s hard not to love her tarot series cards and her cool, zodiac-inspired tapestries-cum-rugs. Or make a dash for Knightsbridge’s Pavilion for an evening of vino and poetry readings: one of the hot tickets in town, ‘Tiger’ Lily puts the sexiness into salon. This sassy woman’s a phenomenon. From £123 for a tarot box to £26,000 for a tapestry. lily-lewis.com 

NEW FACE: Code8

For bespoke lipstick

Why bother schlepping around stores looking for the perfect shade of lippie when colour maestro, Juan, of new cosmetics brand Code 8 can mix a bespoke one for you in front of your very eyes? (You name it yourself and, cutely, it comes with a birth certificate. And the shade’s soooooh on point, you’ll love it.) Simultaneously, makeup artist Sasha can give you a maquillage lesson to create your heavenly new face and also spring clean your makeup bag, jettisoning eye shadows and lipsticks that don’t suit you and creating your capsule collection. You’ll leave Burlington Arcade with a new look and streamlined cosmetics. Best of all, you’ll never fear discontinued lippie lines again. Bespoke lipstick £80, refills £45. codeeight.com

NEW FROCK: Arlettie

For discounted designer clothes and accessories

The leading glam outlet for luxury sample and private sales. You’ll find lovely staff and rails of exclusive brands (ssshhh!) at a snip of the retail price. (It’s well worth paying for VIP membership to get priority access.)  Snap up armfuls – saves it going into landfill – and you’ll look your pretty best for 2024. They’ve already opened in Paris, are launching in Milan, and are revamping the London showroom: think new year, new look. What could be better? Membership from £80 per annum. arlettie.com/en  

NEW GADGET: Ninja 15-in-1 Multi Cooker

For a cooking pot that does it all

Want to cook up a storm? Pressure cook a speedy meal in quarter the usual time? Or maybe stack your main and side dishes and prepare them simultaneously? (The one-pot solution saves so much washing up.) Want to slow cook, prove bread or bake? Maybe steam a fluffy cake? Or steam roast a 3kg chicken? (There’s even a digital probe to tell you when it’s cooked — or your beef’s rare.) As for the (healthy) air frying, mwah, it beats air kissing. But then who doesn’t love parmesan chips? With 15 cooking functions under one smart lid, it was one of the Which? best buys of the year. If you like gadgets, this bit of kit’s great. £249.99. ninjakitchen.co.uk 

NEW WELLNESS: John Bell & Croyden

For a world-class pharmacy

Whizz to this Marylebone, if not intragalactic, institution – it’s certainly the world’s best pharmacy, particularly for all things natural. Some fave new products? If you’re wired and tired, Dreem Distillery offers the best-ever restorative sleep with premier-quality CBD products, created by a former chronic insomniac. (If you’re mentally and emotionally exhausted, this dreamy product totally fits the zzzz bill.) Nutriburst’s gummies make you feel as if you’re eating grown-ups’ jelly babies, yum, at 37p a capsule —and they also really promote strong nails. One word for Innersense’s organic, natural hair products? Obsessed! Not just because they smell divine, do the job perfectly and are chokka with goodies from charcoal to aloe and lavender. Want to be a human time machine? Then Dr Levy’s magical potions bag the medal for cosmeceutical stem cell stimulation that regenerates the skin – to see is to believe its success around the eyes – and lessens pigmentation: yes, ageing is reversible. Ilāpothecary’s Balm is like spreading honey infused wax and helps with swelling (it has arnica in it); think pioneering, award-winning brand, so deffo pop some of that into your shopping basket. But, frankly, it’s hard to go wrong with anything you buy in this royal patented store celebrating its 225th anniversary. johnbellcroyden.co.uk