I love New Year’s Day. I know I’ve said it before about how much I love Fall & how much I love Christmas, & I really do, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something so special about New Years. It’s a reminder & opportunity for a fresh start (plus, you get to start using a new day planner…that’s always fun). Of course, when you think about it, it’s just another day…just another set of 24 hours spinning around the Sun, but I think mentally it’s the fact that we are closing out a full year behind us & starting a brand new adventure into the new year ahead.
A new year is a fresh start to all sorts of possibilities. It’s also a time to get easily swept away by our emotions & excitement if we’re not careful. We get so carried away with the idea of a clean slate that we end up piling all sorts of everything onto the slate & making a hot mess of it all over again. We pile on all these new things in our lives, hoping it will make our lives better…or at least seem so, but in reality, they end up swamping us & overwhelming us all over again. maybe these new things take on the form of a gym membership or starting a new diet, or whatever other resolutions you’ve cooked up for yourself. This, I think, is where we enter the danger zone. We feel brand new so we pile on all the other brand new. We forget we’re still living the same life we were living 24 hours ago, & that if we don’t adjust our lives slowly, all the new won’t mesh & fit with what is already established. When we wake up from all the post-Christmas/New Year’s sparkly, magical, holiday fog, that’s when we end up giving up all the new resolutions we’ve taken on. We get overwhelmed by real life & all the major changes fall back to the wayside.
That’s why this year my fresh start looks a little different. I’m not piling on a bunch of new things, but rather, working to fine-tune the things I’ve already been doing. For instance, I’ve already been exercising just about every day, so I’ve just set some more time-specific goals for myself for the year based on what I’ve already started. During the latter half of 2017, I had already started reading more but I was getting side-tracked by TV shows, so I’ve limited myself to 1-2 shows per season & have amped up the reading. During 2017 I was already spending more time with God through prayer & Bible study, already been blogging & writing more, so I just took those & set better time-specific goals for that. I’ve tried multiple ways to set an organized routine for myself until I found what worked, so now I’m just fine-tuning my daily routines in order to better myself. It feels good, honestly. It’s the first year I’m not really adding anything new or doing any major life overhauls, but rather accepting that fact that I can’t do it all, so limiting myself to doing well what I’ve already been doing & making it even better. I actually feel less stressed going into the new year & my new goals, because what I’ve established are goals that will happen over time rather than cause me to feel like I should see drastic changes in 1 week. They’re long-term practices to create a better life rather than overwhelming actions from which I’ll be (disappointedly so) looking for instant gratification.
I truly am beyond excited for the new year. I’m excited to be spending more time with you all & I can’t wait to see what the year holds. I’m thankful for the lessons God taught me last year & I can’t wait to see what He does this year. So, here’s to a new year & learning to live better…even if it takes a little longer than just the first 7 days.
What kind of resolutions or goals have you established for yourself this year? Let me hear from you in the comments below!
Be blessed, friends!