Not making New Year Resolutions

Phew! What a relief. No New Year Resolutions for me.

‘A Quiet Read’ by William Kay Blacklock

I think that, on balance, I have enough to get on with, without feeling guilty that, yet again, I have made – several – promises and didn’t keep them. At the start of any year, who needs that kind of pressure? In fact, making any promise to do or not to do, so often feels like a taunt, an invitation to stray. So now I save my headspace for things I want to get done: phone that friend, go shopping, go for a walk, do some work. Just do it.

Perhaps because the New Year is so close to my birthday, when I was younger, the New Year was an almost sacrosanct time for starting over, beginning again, doing better… But by whose measure should that be judged? My own view of what I was doing, was – and too often still is – inclined to disappointment and perfectionism. Which is to say, that I too often failed to notice the many small-step achievements that inch me from A to B, and castigated myself too readily for not reaching the stars when I said I would.

Perhaps now is not quite the right time to arrive at the stars. Or perhaps, I would be better to realise that I get to the stars one small step at a time; doing a small thing towards a big aim is so much better than doing nothing at all.

So progress in small steps is the order of the day, and thankfulness that I usually manage to do – most of – what I plan to do. Which sounds far more sustainable than a bunch of promises to myself that I know, almost even before I make them, I will feel guilty about.

There is no substitute for the small determination that takes us an inch forward at a time.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year 2019. May all our dreams come true.

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