Reclaiming Your New Year's Resolutions
By: Emilie L. Duck
By the time this article goes to press, it will be mid-January. The first of the month, with all of its promise, will seem long past as routines are re-established and the year begins in earnest.
Perhaps you half-heartedly committed to a plan of self- improvement on New Year’s Day, only to find yourself at a loss a week later. You had lofty, amorphous goals. You knew this was going to be the year.
And yet, you find the year has somehow already buried itself under a heap of bills, a load of laundry, your sister’s call that you still need to return, and deadlines that won’t stop coming. For all you know, the year may have decided to hibernate until next year. In the meantime, you’re back to doing the best you can with what you’ve got.
I’ll let you in on a secret: Me too.
But I have a second secret.
I planned for this.
This may be the year, but I knew this January was coming. January is no time for making grand goals that you know deep down you have no chance at keeping. Furthermore, the beginning of a new year is no time to berate yourself for failing to execute
your vision perfectly on day one. All is not lost if you start, stumble, and then start again. In fact, you’ve just given yourself a chance to prove that 2017 is an excellent year for resiliency (good job, you).
The new year is young, so let it have a little time to mature before you set your plans in motion. Come to think of it, those ideas could probably use some time to mature as well—especially if you want to make both short and long term progress. 2017 is an excellent year to begin again (again).
To that end, I’m reclaiming January—for you, for me, and for anyone else who woke up on the first feeling that they should have a plan in place, though no plan was in sight. January is the perfect month for making such plans.
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