Don’t Wait for a Fresh Start

Welcome to 2015! Are you, like me, watching waves of New Years resolutions take over Facebook? There’s something addicting about a fresh start. Here’s my suggestion for 2015:

The Only New Years Resolution You’ll Ever Need:

I will remind myself that change doesn’t happen when we make a single choice, it happens when we make countless daily decisions. Whatever my goal may be, achieving it may not be an all-at-once activity but a slow, intermittent march towards what I want in my life. Daily ‘failures’ and missteps are not reasons to ‘start over’, but motivators to keep stepping forward.

When I was twelve years old, I belonged to an online community for teens. One of the threads that was very popular was for teenagers struggling with self-harm. They would post how many days it had been since their last slip-up and others would try to encourage them.Here’s the problem with that:
Over and over again I would watch kids tough it out through days 3, 8, 26, 97, and then they would have a bad day and declare themselves at 0 again.

Here’s the secret: There are no day zeroes!

I began making calenders for some of the teens, where they could mark an X for each successful day they had. A blank day surrounded by Xs is a lot less scary and more motivating than a constantly restarting number! Over time, the goal was for more Xs, not some ridiculous high number that could come crashing down in an instant.

As much as we would all love there to be ‘turning points’ in our lives where a catchy montage begins to play in the background and we suddenly kick into high gear and achieve success, I’m afraid life passes with a little less pomp and circumstance. You often don’t realize your hard work until months down the road. Choosing a new ambition or goal requires blind trust, daily choices, and forgiveness of mistakes. So stop restarting your blog, don’t neglect your Etsy just because you’ve slacked for ‘too long’, don’t give up on eating healthier because you binged on ice cream a couple nights or haven’t seen your gym in months.

You don’t need a reason to start, you just need to keep going!