New Year, Same Goals: The Annual Mantras I Follow to Improve My Life

life goals

Feb 1

For awhile, I was the kind of person who lived for the fresh start of New Year’s Day. Being someone who craves a little switcharoo in life every once and awhile, there was something about that shift from December 31 to January 1 that inspired me to be like, “This is going to be my year,” as if I didn’t say that the year before. But hey, new year, new me, right?

Believing that I was going to butterfly into a Beyonce-like goddess, I would invent elaborate lists of everything I needed to accomplish within 365 days every year. (When I say “elaborate lists,” I mean these suckers would be pages long. Basically full-length novels of tasks like “Learn how to play to guitar,” “Start a novel,” “Run every day” (LOL to that one) and a lot more.) I had to accomplish everything by December 31 if I wanted to check that year off as a success.

Well, as many New Year’s resolutions go, you can guess what happened over the years — I couldn’t meet every goal that I had set to accomplish.

I used excuses like “My hands are too small” and “I don’t have time” for why I couldn’t learn how to play guitar, ignored sticky notes that reminded me to “Do 10 push-ups every day” and became too frustrated to complete “Master winged eye liner” because of shaky hands and lack of makeup wipes.

As for the running every day goal, it turned out that it was unrealistic af for someone who wasn’t too fond of cramping calves, eye-burning sweat and exacerbated lungs. (Seriously. God bless runners.)

What I found was the lists that I had thought would motivate me throughout the year ended up being self-esteem daggers. If I failed or even struggled at just one of the goals on the list, I would just cancel the entire year and throw out my chances of being happy about myself in the trash.

I felt like a loser who would talk the talk but stumble and fall face first at walking the walk. How could I see the year, let alone myself, as a success if I had somehow failed along the way? My perfection-obsessed ass sure wasn’t having any of that.

I guess I enjoyed this self-induced torture for quite a while because I continued to make these lists every year with an idealized version of myself in the back of my mind, taunting me. You know what I’m talking about when I say “idealized version of myself.” They’re you, just a lot more successful, attractive, happier and everything that you aren’t in that moment. Basically just someone who is an unobtainable amount of perfect.

This alternate-universe me was a constant reminder of why I sucked and how I did not have enough perseverance to become them. Each failed resolution engrained that self-confidence blow even further.

However, since about 2016, I have stopped creating these novel-like lists after I realized something — I will never be 100% happy with who I am, and that’s okay.

Listen, not being happy with every part of who you are doesn’t mean you’re incapable of being confident. I have never really been in love with who I am, but Lord knows that I am a lot more confident now than I was. Even compared to myself on February 1 of last year, I know I am happier. I have learned a lot about myself within the past 365 days and I am a better person because of it.

But what I became aware of was that worrying about that idealized person was distracting me from where and who I was at that moment. I was too focused on what future me could be that I had forgotten how much I had grown over the years. It was then that I accepted that I will never be a “I am outgoing af, run every day, eat healthy 24/7, play the guitar fluently, dedicate every moment of my free time my dreams and never screw up” type of person.

That’s just not possible for me, nor is it really possible for every person.

Frankly, I don’t ever want to be someone who is perfect in everything they do. I mean, just think of the pressure perfection places on a person. It might look like they have their life together on the outside, but we all know what’s it like to worry if everything you do is 100% the best. Perfectionism definitely isn’t a fun time.

Instead, I think it’s a lot more comforting to know that people aren’t perfect. Even the people who we admire because we think they are so much better than us have failed, probably more than once, during their lifetime. Isn’t it nice to know that we’re never alone in our mistakes and that happiness is still possible even when you think you’ve failed? We’re just humans after all.

Of course, there are still days here and there when I am not happy with who I am, days when that idealized version creeps in.

But this realization has transformed the way that I view New Year’s resolutions each year. I am still a person who likes to set goals within a timeframe; that part hasn’t changed. What I do now is create resolutions that transcend over the years and better who I am on the inside, not just the outside.

Here are my annual resolutions:

Step Out of My Comfort Zone

I kind of have a love-hate relationship with this goal.

First of all, like I had mentioned in the beginning of this post, I do love change. I get bored of the same thing, so I try to do things that are somewhat out of the ordinary to add flavor. It might be as simple as driving a different route home from work, ordering a flavor of ice cream that I’ve never tried or changing up my style. I guess you could all call these mild ways of going out of my comfort zone.

However, change can be tough as hell, especially when it’s out of your control.

For me, I have trouble with changing schools, even when I went from middle to high school. I mean, all it was was going from one building to another. Yet I was still terrified as heck because I was scared of the unfamiliar environment and unforeseen stresses that high school would bring. Walking around the halls with legal adults as my peers and stressing about classes that determined what college I got into? My 14-year-old self was scared shitless.

Still, like a lot of things that happen in life, I knew that the only way to overcome this fear of being uncomfortable was to just do it (please sponsor me, Nike). As much as I feared stepping out of my sphere of familiarity, I wanted to challenge myself by moving onwards.

I also knew that I couldn’t stop graduation from coming and that the only way to become the person I wanted to be was to keep moving forward. It’d be like running through the perfume department, trying to reach that goal on the other side, but I had to do it.

When I was in high school, there were times where I was emotional af because I was intimidated by the people and unfamiliar environment around me.

However, I kept pushing forward, knowing that I would find my niche and grow as a person to the point where I enjoyed my time in high school and was thankful for who I was becoming.

This what I try to continue to do.

Going out of my comfort zone is still hard and will always be a daunting task — anxiety likes to make things seem a lot more dramatic and intimidating than they actually are — but it’s going out of that safety net that has really made me who I am today.

I know that I can overcome obstacles that seem impossible, like going to a first club meeting solo, traveling to another country for over a week without my family or getting through an interview and landing a job. These are all things that scared the shit out of me at first but became easier as I gained more experience, and I am thankful for having the courage to test myself.

No matter how big or small your comfort zone is, every step you make outside of it is progress that transforms you into a stronger person.

Make Progress with My Passions

It’s no secret that I write a lot. Being that I am a journalism and professional writing major, work for the college newspaper and have an on-campus writing job, you’ll find me on my lab top basically 24/7.

Do I sometimes spend too much time watching Youtube videos when I should be doing work? Maybe.

But I am writing on this thing most of the time. I swear.

Between school and work, it can sometimes be difficult to find the time and energy to pursue my personal projects, such as posting regularly on this blog and writing every day for my book. I am someone who needs to use 100% of my brain when writing for these passions, because I want to portray the important messages of “You’re not alone” in the best way that I can.

However, it can be a bit tiresome when I’ve been writing all day. There are many times when I opt to relax rather than work on Your Friend Jane, which causes me to beat myself up about not utilizing my free time to work on my dreams.

I mean, you always hear that if you really care about something, you won’t make excuses to not do it. So when I do make excuses that I am too exhausted or not in the right mindset to write creatively, I tend to doubt myself quite a bit, wondering if I will ever make these dreams a reality.

But with this resolution of “Make progress in my passions,” I am choosing to focus on what I am writing, not when or how much I am writing. I do still try to write for either Your Friend Jane or my book every day, even if what I am writing is only a few words. I want to complete these dreams someday, and it’s good to set aside time for things that you love.

But what I care about the most is making progress. Whether that means improving a little bit in my writing each year, continuing to write for this blog without giving it up or getting further into the process of writing my book, I will be happy for simply trying.

Even if I miss a deadline or page goal that I’ve set for myself on certain days, progress is progress, no matter how slow and/or small it is.

And I think that’s really the key in achieving your dreams — having the persistence to keep going.

Don’t Stress Over What I Can’t Control

Being that I am an average college student who worries about the future 24/7, I can become a ball of stress a lot of the time.

Between school, work, extracurricular activities and personal projects, it’s inevitable for these tasks to pile up and kind of hit me all at once. I swear, it’s like the gods say, “Oh, Jane looks a little too comfortable right now. Let’s make every large assignment due on the day she has work and a bunch of club meetings.” Curse you, gods!

I also think this tendency to be stressed a lot stems from the perfectionist nature in me. I know I said that I’ve been trying to not pressure myself to be 100% all of the time, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t want to try to do the best I can. I am passionate about a lot of things, and I still like to present the truest version of me in what I do. I like making work that I can be proud of.

Because of this, I tend to overthink about things that I can’t control.

I could be sitting in a class where we’re not really learning anything that day, thinking about how I could be doing something on my to-do list rather than wasting my time; I could be worrying in bed with a million thoughts keeping me awake and debating on if I should work on homework since I can’t sleep or just try to get some rest; I could be actually working on the assignment itself and stress over how I’m not working fast enough and therefore losing time for when I have to do the other things.

Yay for anxiety and being a human with many obligations!

Over the years, when I find that I am overflowing with anxiety, what I have been trying to do is talk to myself, in a totally-not-creepy kind of way. I do this a lot actually. I tell myself, “You’ll be okay. You always finish what you need to finish. You’ll get through this. Just breathe,” because I have realized that I am not helping myself if I am stressed about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.

Still, I have to admit that this isn’t an easy thing to do.

Giving yourself a positive pep talk is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and it’s definitely not something that will happen over night. Sometimes anxiety is just overwhelming. Lord knows that even when I try, there’s a voice inside of my head that likes to be stubborn by thinking that it’s right when it tells me, “You’re too weak to do this. You won’t get this done. You have no time. In fact, you’re running out of time by even thinking about how you have no time.”

But I’ve noticed that self-love talk is really the key to reducing stress and improving your self-esteem. I know I have been able to pull through stressful times, and I know that I am able do it again when I tell myself that I can do. I mean, we can’t really choose everything that happens to us. The best we can do sometimes is change our perspective.

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And there you have it, folks. These are the goals that I try to live by each year, and so far, I think I have done pretty well. Without even realizing it at first, I have grown each year into a person that I am proud to be.

Sure, I am still not perfect and have made plenty of mistakes throughout the years. Lord knows there are things that I try to work on. I don’t think there is ever a time when you’re like, “Yep! This is it! I am the best version of myself and I don’t have to try any longer!” Because I think that we will always grow to be better as we get older without even realizing it. There’s always room for improvement somewhere.

But maintaining these simple goals to actively improve who I am is really helpful when trying to live a happier life. I don’t want to make resolutions that only change who I am on the outside, and I don’t want to have specific goals that will make me feel like crap if I don’t complete them.

Instead, I want to really become a better person by focusing on things that I know will challenge me enough to grow. I want to remind myself that these goals aren’t just things that can only begin once it’s January 1 but that I can do these goals throughout the year.

And if I somehow stumble along the way with working towards these goals, which is inevitable for all of us, every “failure” will still be part of the growing process which is what these goals are truly about— growth.

So, if you’re someone like me who tends to focus on being perfect all of the time, stop and take a breath. Ingest that good ole air in and allow yourself to live life in all of its successes and failures, no matter what time of the year it is. There is never a wrong time to start going after what you want nor is there no shame in having to start again. It’s all about that perseverance, kids. It’s all about the motivation to keep going.

Your friend,
Jane