Here we are. Mid January! The big question is… how are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions? Let me tell you something. I am doing great, and my anxiety can’t be more under control all because of my big resolution in 2019: not having New Year’s resolutions at all! And it has been so far the best beginning of a year for as long as I can remember.
No. I am not saying that my anxiety is completely cured and that I suddenly live in la la land. I just realized something and is all thanks to my little frenemy, the anxiety monster. Expectation kills me slowly. Expectation makes me wonder about a future that doesn’t exist. So why torturing myself with an extra pressure of induced expectations and promises that I know in my heart I will barely keep up as the year progresses?
Instead, I am trying a new technique. And it sounds like a Nike ad but, from now on if I want something I will let’s just do it, make it happen. I am a big supporter of having dreams and objectives. That doesn’t have to change. My point is, I don’t want the year to begin with a set of rules to follow based on desires, things I wish magically to happen during the year. I am tired of wanting. I need things to happen, and they only will if I am more present, thus making me more proactive in the NOW instead of dreaming about the future.
If resolutions work for you, awesome! I realized that for me they were not motivations but reasons to feel guilty later on. A failed resolution resulted on a new reason for me to punish myself, to feel unworthy and miserable. This time, I decided to ditch the little list, the number of pounds I expect to loose, or the number of words I expect to write per day. I will make changes in my life, or make things happen only if I am fully motivated by my current state of mind. If tomorrow I eat a burger just because I want to, I will not punish myself for falling out of the diet wagon. Or if this week my writing fails, I guess there will come a moment when I will be more prepared and eager to hit those blank pages. I will write when I am inspired and ready. I will go to the gym when I have the energy to do so, and not because I want the scale to change but because I want to feel healthier overall. I won’t care if at the end of the year I lost one pound or twenty or none.
Overall, I think we all want to grow, to be better persons. It seems to me like those New Year’s resolutions have more to do with “having a better year.” But sometimes that doesn’t happen. You have good years and bad years. It always happens the same way. When that clock hits midnight on December 31st, we kiss each other and hope for the best. I entered this year knowing that not matter what happens in 2019, by this time of the year next year every single one of us will be more evolved souls after all. This time I decided to stop looking for perfection or approval from others. I just want to live.
January still feels like a long ass Monday. We are not fully into the year yet, we still sleepy from the holiday break, some of us with a Christmas decoration or two still hanging around the house. I still have some holiday blues and I miss my family and the gatherings and celebrations. Equally as a Monday, January hit us hard. Instead of expecting that it would be like Friday already, I will spent this long ass Monday-like month by leaving one day at a time, so fuck the resolutions! I am letting 2019 surprise me and leave it the best I can. Expectations free…
