I’ve never been someone who has made New Year’s resolutions. In my mind, resolutions always seemed like radical, impossible goals designed to drastically change one’s life overnight. Growing up, I watched as people vowed to stop eating sugar, stop spending their money frivolously, start exercising consistently, pick up a new hobby, or eat healthier, and promptly give up before January would even reach a close. I always felt that declaring New Year’s resolutions was just setting myself up for failure. But over the last couple of weeks, as 2023 has come to an end and 2024 has opened its doors, a series of candid conversations with multiple friends and loved ones has begun to re-shape my former understanding of New Year’s resolutions.
Maybe resolutions don’t need to be utterly life changing. Maybe they don’t need to be concrete, or even altogether that ambitious. Maybe they can be things I’m already doing and want to continue, maybe they can be taking the first steps towards something bigger, maybe they can be focusing on what I’m looking forward to. Perhaps this epiphany isn’t something revolutionary, but it has made me more excited for 2024 than I’ve even been for a new year before.
2023 was a year of some pretty intense growth for me, and I think has put me in a position where I’m ready to meet this next year with a level of intentionality maybe I wasn’t previously ready for. Part of my resolution evolution is to look back before I look forward. And I don’t mean looking back with the mentality of finding things to change about myself and my life, but rather acknowledging the progress I’ve made, understanding where I’m at, and recognizing how I’ve grown. What did I learn most from this last year? What am I most proud of? What were my favorite memories? What do I want to follow me into the next year? Looking back with patience and gentleness for myself makes looking forward less intimidating and the future more approachable. For example, this last year I’ve been working on being more emotionally vulnerable with those closest to me. I’ve noticed that talking about my feelings has started to become a bit easier and less like swallowing nails. I’m proud of the progress that I’ve made, and recognising how far I’ve come makes it easier for me to believe that I can go farther.
Starting here has made creating new goals for myself feel less daunting. Starting therapy has been on my to-do list for probably the past four years, but was always something I put off because the process to get started felt like such a large task. But now, my quest for a therapist doesn’t feel like a completely new and detached experience, it feels like the next steps in a journey of self discovery and acceptance that has been at play since I started college in 2021. During the last few weeks I’ve managed to at least start researching therapy options near me that work with my insurance, something that a year ago would have felt impossible.
Similarly, I’ve been saying for a while that I want to start going to the gym. I think it is something that I would genuinely enjoy. I used to be a fairly active person, but lost touch with that side of myself after I had knee surgery a few years back. However, gym culture is terrifying to me for a variety of reasons that I’m sure many can understand. This wasn’t something I would have the courage to take on myself, but while I was having coffee with a friend the other day, and expressing my desire to potentially find new ways to get active, they offered to not only hold me accountable, but to go to the gym with me and walk me through the basics. While it is my nature to brush opportunities like this off, I thought that this was a chance to reconnect with a part of myself that I have missed. Going to the gym is a new way to explore a piece of me that has always been there. My gym journey starts tomorrow. Wish me luck. Please.
These are merely the more notable ways my reconceptualization of New Year’s resolutions have begun to have an impact on my life. I’m taking baby steps, I’m not making huge changes overnight, I’m excited for the new year and all that it may bring, and I don’t feel like I’m going to fail. It’s a new year, and I’m the same me, and that’s ok, and hopefully I’ll grow this year, and if I don’t, there’s always next year.