To Resolve Or Not to Resolve ...

Every year at this time, I start debating with myself whether or not to organize some New Year's Resolutions.  For a long time, I would decide on two or three things, and without fail, fail to meet any of them!  Eventually, I admitted to myself that a large part of the reason was because they were unrealistic.  At the first indication that they were not going to "work," I'd get all depressed and chuck the whole idea.

Realizing the truth about my resolutions, I decided to skip any formal declarations of things I wanted/hoped to do in any given year.  But I always felt like I was taking the easy way out.

Last year, I decided that I would try something slightly different, and rather than calling them "resolutions," I would tell myself they were reachable goals.  They included things like eating better, exercising more, trying to do better at work - you get the picture.  And the good news is, that I was able to keep them in mind all year, and even if I didn't accomplish exactly what I'd hoped, I felt like I'd been trying, and that was definitely a good thing.

I also tried the One Little Word challenge, choosing "kindness" for my word of the year.  It seemed like this would be an excellent thing along the way to trying to bring myself into the more positive aspects of things.  I'm happy to say that for the most part, it worked.  I may still not be the kindest person you'll ever meet, but I'm a lot better than I used to be, and a lot more conscious of trying harder to be kind.

Thinking of this, I have decided that for me at least, this approach to things works a lot better.  I have a tendency to be really hard on myself if I have specific expectations set in stone and I fail to meet them 100%.  Whether or not they are realistic doesn't  matter - I get frustrated and angry with myself and figuratively, take about 10 steps backward.

So in 2013, I'm going to work on my "personal goals" as opposed to my New Year's Resolutions.  Some will be relatively mundane, but all of them will be things that will make me *want* to accomplish them.  At the moment, I'm still floating things in , my brain, deciding what will be the main focuses (foci?), but to be perfectly honest, I think the fact that I'm giving it all some serious thought is a step in the right direction, and I'm pretty happy about that.

In the meantime, there's still plenty of Christmastime to enjoy, and I plan to do just that!