Kill the old you this winter

When I woke up today, I had no intention of writing about the Great Lock-In trend. I was planning a few different topics: a piece about the Local Holiday (™)—having just returned from my own Portuguese outback adventure—and a couple of thought-provoking interviews with netizens of the indie web as follow-up to my article in New_Public. And these are still coming, but in the meantime—

I have a feeling the internet’s obsession with locking in is about something a lot bigger, and more ancient.

If you’ve seen one self-improvement trend, you’ve seen them all. At first glance, the Great Lock-In is no different from the rest: the Winter Arc, 75 Hard, Medium, and Soft, Operation 66 etc (what’s in a name?). The trend is loosely based on the idea that it takes three months to form a habit and encourages users to lock in at the end of the year to transform their lives. September is the new January!

While everyone winds down for the colder months, you’ll be the only one still doing morning runs in the dark. While everyone is letting themselves go over the holidays, you’re staying disciplined and resisting temptations.

This is a sprint, one video explains, a “time when you put forth immense effort in some area of your life: be it fitness, finance, career.”

I’m low-key fascinated with this in the same way I’m fascinated with cults, high-demand religions, and serial killers—as different flavours of pathology I don’t fully understand but can’t look away from. The contradictions inherent in their logic, the over-the-top language paired with mundane advice, the fervent belief in discipline and self-denial. The language of change, renewal, in the context of fitness and financial goals. It breaks my brain.

It’s wild how our concept of a totalising, transformative experience is just…eat clean, train hard, go to bed early. Yet we eagerly submit to it, as if it holds the answer to being a human in an increasingly lonely and unstable world. As if we’ll come out the other side renewed, changed, stronger. This is some Hero’s Journey, Greek tragedy, occult, alchemical stuff.

It’s not just that you can pick up some sustainable habits by January—you can transform your life and become unrecognisable through discipline and immense effort. Another name for this challenge, the Winter Arc, is even more on the nose: an arc is for characters in a story. Therefore, this is your Hero’s Journey, where you conquer your old self and return brand-new.

The language of the videos is wild, too. The lists of goals recited like an incantation, the urgency to dedicate yourself entirely to a set of rules, even if—especially if—they’re difficult to follow. “Kill the old you this winter” is weird in the context of a morning routine, but makes perfect sense as a yearning for catharsis.

The word catharsis comes from Ancient Greek and it means purification in order to become emotionally restored, renewed. In theatre, it refers to making the audience suffer along with the characters, then offering relief by resolving the narrative tension. In psychoanalysis, catharsis is the state of emotional restoration that comes after processing your repressed emotions. But in every case, it’s a trade-off and has to be earned through intense, transformative effort.

Like locking in for four months while everyone around you sleeps in, goes apple picking, and celebrates Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or whatever.

Both the desire and the language of these videos feels misplaced, even ominous. Let it consume you? Let it burn you? Are you ok? I can’t imagine how unbearably bad things must be if you’re wishing for an all-consuming experience. For a completely different life.

Do you really want to drop out, lock in and become unrecognisable by 2026? Stop leaving the house, ditch your friends, home-order all your groceries, no entertainment, no fun, no nothing, just work and exercise and matcha lattes? I’m still trying to repress memories of the last time we all did that during Covid.

Do you literally want to become unrecognisable? Nuke your current life, hobbies, social circle, personality, and personal history? Do you understand the level of grief you’d have to deal with if your life changed radically in such a short time? The kind of personal or global catastrophe it would take? You would miss the hell out of your old life! Forget 5am wake-ups and açai bowls, you’d be curled up in a ball crying from September to December.

I get that these creators don’t actually want to vanquish their former selves and come out alchemically transformed. I know on some level, what they’re actually saying. I even get where the desire comes from.

The world feels like a dangerous and nonsensical place: it’s impossible to get or keep a job, to have a relationship or even a one night stand, your friends and family are far away or completely brainwashed by divisive politics, and you’ve just put on 10kg stress-eating.

But I also recognise the fervour behind this kind of language. I’ve been there myself. For a long time all I wanted was to be an actor, not as a profession, but as an identity. I had been in an amateur troupe for years when I got into my country’s top acting academy. I was ready and eager to dedicate all of my time, energy, and sanity to this.

The endless, exhausting rehearsals and shoots, the total lack of stability and routine, the erratic eating and sleeping schedule, the emotional wear-and-tear—I wanted all of it. It was all one big levelling, cathartic experience and I thought it would finally make me whole. The recent Great Lock-In videos radiate a similar kind of desire.

It’s about relinquishing control and letting an experience work you over until the regular stuff no longer matters. This is why psychedelics feel cathartic, and childbirth, and grief, and ultra-marathons. That’s the appeal of ego death during an acid trip. People in the throes of giving birth don’t care that they’ve shit themselves, just like Oedipus didn’t care he had to take out his own eyes to atone for what he set in motion. Cathartic events transcend the everyday and absolve us of its worries.

This is especially appealing in our current world, where we’re expected (and able, at least in theory) to control and optimise every aspect of our lives. We’re exhausted and if we can hand over the reins to a big, momentous process (like a regimented 4-month challenge), we will. We want to be on our own Hero’s Journey.

I recommend you read about the Hero’s Journey in full, but until you do—I get a similar vibe from Great Lock-In videos. It’s an almost-magical belief that, if you can submit to the perfect routine, your life will take on epic meaning and proportions. This Hero’s Journey even comes with a uniform and everything: oversized black jogger set, hood up, headphones on, “getting ready to go for a run at 5 am in the rain”.

Another place ripe for the picking is the occult. Just like highly regimented life routines, it deals in rigor, ritual, and self-discipline. For example, rituals used to summon angels or demons often start with prolonged periods of cleansing through strict self-abnegation.

The Abramelin is probably the best known example of this and its rules will be familiar to Lock-In enthusiasts: clean eating, no alcohol, cigarettes or other drugs, no entertainment or seeing friends, daily prayer, study, and meditation, no sex or physical sexual release. In some versions, practitioners literally have to lock themselves in the house for the duration of the ritual, which is usually 6 to 18 months. The end goal of the Abramelin is to summon your guardian angel and be granted a wish, any wish.

The Abramelin gained pop culture notoriety after Aleister Crowley attempted and then abandoned it, forever cursing the Scottish manor where it happened and all of its subsequent owners. Apparently, he didn’t have the discipline to stick to the ritual’s famously strict rules.

If some of us are cutting carbs and doing 5am runs in winter like we’re trying to summon a demon, what are we even doing? Have we lost the plot entirely?

If you’re considering locking in this autumn and winter, don’t. I doubt this will be the change you’re hoping for. If you keep having to reinvent yourself every 6 months, it may be time to admit something deeper is broken.

And if catharsis is what you’re after, here is a short list of ways to do it that prioritise pleasure and not grit:

• Go out and get completely fucked up. Obviously, don’t annihilate your liver, don’t pass out or put yourself in danger. You should always know your limits and be aware of your surroundings. But a night of light transgressions—getting buzzed, coming home late, ditching the evening & morning routine—can be very cathartic.

• Dance for a few hours straight, past your limit, until you’re sweaty, tired, hungry. Dance yourself clean (the song doesn’t do this expression justice IMO).

• Have a loud, snotty, messy cry. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t benefit from this.

• Sleep for 11 hours. This isn’t always possible or even desirable, but from time to time the stars align. Besides, winter is for sleeping, not running marathons. Bears know what’s what.

• If you’re physically able, go for a very long hike. This can be any distance (15km or 1500), but it needs to be longer than you’ve ever gone before and in a place you’ve never been to.

• Experience a transcendent piece of media— be it music, film, a book, a play, a painting.

This list is woefully incomplete and off the top of my head. If you have any good suggestions, leave a comment. And if it sounds good, I’ll test it out and report back. Anything at this point to avoid looking at more Great Lock-In content.

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