Keep This In Mind For The New Year

It's hard to believe it, but here we are once again at the beginning of a new year: a time filled with post-holiday blues, the annual spike in memberships for gyms, and a whole lot of reflection for those of us who enjoy that kind of thing. As we say goodbye to 2018, and 2019 begins, I wanted to take a second to reflect on this idea of the old and the new.

New Year's has always been a time that we set resolutions, make plans, and set forth with the best of intentions when we are at the beginning of the calendar year. We always expect the best; we're ready to put the past away and start off on the best foot. The whole world is in this zone where we tell each other "let's STICK to these resolutions and CHANGE our bad habits and GROW and be AWESOME PEOPLE"!!!! And yet somehow, every year ends up being very much the same in terms of our resolutions. At some point, we give up on something once it becomes too difficult or inconvenient, get stuck back in our normal routines, and by the middle of the year we are already wishing for the next. We all seem to have that one thing that triggers our bad habits and we say "well that was a good try, maybe next time".

While making resolutions around this time of year can be very uplifting, I think we fail to forget that a year is a very long time. It's hard to believe it, but there were many things that happened in 2018 that seem like a longer ago than 11-12 months. Something that I urge you to do is to try to remember where you were just a year ago. What challenges were you facing? What were you unsure about for the future? Have things changed?

When I reflect on my year, it seems very similar to all the others. There were so many wonderful triumphs, so many memories. There were a fair amount of hard days and times where I was frustrated with my current situation. Everything eventually comes to a close, the good and the bad. Something that I want to say is that every year has those moments, the highs and the lows. And because each year has those moments, they have to be defined much more complexly than this.

Before we write off 2018 as a "good year" or a "bad year", I think we have to give ourselves more credit for all of the things that we do in 365 days. We can't label each year as a black and white, this or that, yes or no. While we sometimes feel the weight of the happy or the hard times more heavily than the other, it's not fair to let each year go by and use the excuse of it being "bad" to write off anything that we didn't accomplish or failed at.

So now that we're here, in 2019, I encourage you to take this opportunity to not only set goals for yourself, but reflect on all the good that came out of 2018. Even if it's hard to find on the surface, we should celebrate all the little victories that came out of those 365. I guarantee you that there are many to be proud of.

Happy New Year!

xo Kate