2019 . One Thing at a Time

First blog post! I can’t believe it! Once you’ve read mine twice, go check out Kelsey’s because I’m sure hers is much better ; )

I can’t say I’ve never participated in the new year obsession, because I have (many a time), but I will say this, I’ve hopped off the train. A brand, new year comes with lots of different emotions: Excitement, nervousness, anticipation. But I think maybe one of the most common is expectation. Now this may be more of a belief than an emotion, but I prefer to see it as both. The last day of the year rolls around and we can see the first day of January in the near distance. This prompts us to scroll through our camera roll and post all the great, best-looking memories on Instagram, drink to forget all the not so great looking ones, and whip out our pen and paper to start writing down our new year’s resolutions.

Here’s the problem: To view January 1^st as the beginning of a whole new year is a mistake. I’m not saying it’s not a new year (obviously this is literally the case), but that it’s a mistake to view this time as a “fresh start” like so many do. This January does not mark the beginning of anything, it’s simply a continuation. Your life is continuing on. Moving forward like it does every day, every month, every year. I’ve hopped on the train of this idea, for one reason. Your beginning? Is every single morning when you wake up. As cheesy as it sounds, that moment when you open your eyes is the beginning of a new day, and that right there is where your focus should be.

This tradition of writing down our “New Year’s Resolutions” is such bologna, it should be called, “Setting Ourselves Up for Failure!”. To resolve means to fix a problem. If something has been a problem for, oh let’s say, 12 months(!) do you think that writing it down and saying you’re going to fix it means that there’s actually a tiny, miniscule chance that anything will change? No! The odds, I’m afraid, are not in your favor. When we create these sometimes small, sometimes massive goals, we expect (there’s that word again, I hope you didn’t think I forgot), a lot of ourselves. Let me rephrase – We expect way too much from ourselves. Have you not been told your entire life that, “change does not happen overnight”? So why then when the new year comes around do we just throw this knowledge aside and expect ourselves to be able to get up on January 1^st, work out for an hour, drink at least a gallon of water, eat no less than a lb of broccoli, and write more than a page in our new way-too-expensive Barnes & Noble journal. When we fail to implement these new goals into our life immediately, there’s a feeling of failure. Then comes the discouragement. Then, before you know it, you’re sitting in bed with a pint of double mint chip watching reruns of “Psyche”, and its only January 15^th. Well, there’s always next year.

Get. On. My. Train. There is nothing wrong with setting new goals for yourself. However, do not set so many that you become overwhelmed. Make a couple, and make them achievable (you are not superwoman) (or man!)(But if you are definitely send me an email… I’d love to chat). Do not fall into the trap and think that now that it’s a new year, you can get under your metaphorical car for about an hour or two and fix every little thing that wasn’t running so good in 2018! We both know you’ll end up just throwing some duct tape under there and hoping for the best.

Here’s what you SHOULD do:

The second half of last year was incredibly hard for me, and I started feeling overwhelmed by everything I wanted to achieve, emotionally and physically. So, I wrote something down on a piece of paper, and then carried it in my pocket everywhere (for about three days before it got lost on laundry day). “ONE. THING. AT. A. TIME.”. It may sound super simple and easy, but it truly takes practice. I promise this idea will take over your life in the best way possible, but only if you work at it. Here’s all you have to do: Wake up, greet the beginning of a new day, and come up with one thing you want to achieve. It can be for that morning, even something as little as “take a shower”. Once done, check it off in your brain and come up with a new thing. It can also be for the whole day! Come up with one thing you want to accomplish for the day. Everything else is fair game, but you have to get at least that one thing done. If that goal is a little bit bigger or maybe predictably a bit hard to accomplish then take even that One. Thing. At. A. time. – One. Step. At. A. Time. Break down that one thing into tiny little things, like writing out that entire math problem on paper with step. 1, 2, and so on.

I tend to use the first idea more – Coming up with one thing to do, doing it, checking it off, and then coming up with something else. I find myself to be much more productive this way rather than say, writing out an entire checklist. Take your goals for the year and implement them into your “one thing at a time” daily ones. This doesn’t have to be every day. If one of my goals for the year is to eat more veggies then maybe tomorrow, I’ll wake up, and my one thing to do for the day will be to “include veggies with dinner”. You may be thinking, “that sounds so unproductive”. But try it. I can give you 99% assurance that if you tear up your new year’s resolutions and make one small goal every single day instead, come December, you’ll be able to pull those resolutions out of the trash you haven’t emptied in 12 months and be proud of yourself.

So, New Year Schmew Year, tomorrow is a new day. Focus on the here and now, and don’t set goals for June, because it’s way too far away. In 2019, I’m taking one thing at a time, and I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayer as you hopefully do too.