I don’t particularly like New Year’s resolutions. It seems like setting yourself up for failure, because–if we’re really honest with ourselves–we set the standards so high that there’s no way we could reach the end of the year having accomplished everything we said we were going to. That usually becomes obvious fairly early on, and so we tend to just chuck the whole thing out the window and go back to what we’ve been doing.
So I’m going to do something different this year.
I’m not going to make any New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I’m going to make one (yes, just one) commitment…to be the best I can be this year.
I know when what I’m doing is less than my best…when I’m sloughing off or simply wasting time. I know when I settle for simply “good enough”…
It doesn’t matter what part of my life I’m talking about. I’m going to be the best I can be. That lets me be honest with the areas I know I can improve in…and comfortable with the areas where I am already the best I can be, without falling into the trap of trying to meet societal standards that (1) I’m not interested in and (2) I’m not capable of meeting.
There are some definite areas I know I can do better at. But I’ve discovered in the past that if I make a resolution to change them, that almost certainly ensures that I’m going to fight improving them. I don’t know for sure why, but it feels like that’s a response to outside pressure…that I’m being coerced to make those changes.
If I listen to myself, I think I’ll do better, because it’s a change that comes internally…it’s me listening to my body…knowing my interests and abilities…knowing when I have the strength to do something and when I need to back off.
So…as we head into 2015, here’s to me…and to learning to listen to myself so that a year from now I can look back and say, “Yup…I was the best I could be in 2015.”