Personally, I think it is more realistic to aim to improve yourself just a little every three hundred and sixty-five days.
You can’t expect to bound into a new year making absolutely no errors – it’s simply not possible. However, I think it is more important that you learn to quickly recognise when you have made a mistake and to try to remedy it as soon as you can. Or else, figure out what truly adds value to your life. Is it seeing your closest friends, learning a new hobby, or catching up on your favourite Netflix series?
There’s always some pressure to make this the “year you finally find yourself”, or in which you finally achieve that resolution you’ve been trying out for the past decade. Good on you if you manage to make it a success at last, but don’t beat yourself up about it if you’ve already given it up after three days. Perhaps that in itself is telling you something: the New Year’s Resolution approach just doesn’t work for you as an individual. And that’s completely fine.
Personally, I believe that if I had to make a New Year’s Resolution this year, I would pick something along the lines of “learn from all the bad and good things that happened last year”. I’d rather not pick something specific that I will feel guilty about breaking within a few weeks. Instead, I’d rather try to fix a few things that went wrong with 2018, whilst also carrying on with the things that brought me pleasure and contentment.
2018 was certainly a year in which I made the most grievous errors. I turned a blind eye to things that were hurting and damaging me, and instead chose to put the blame on myself and my own feelings, rather than looking the true source of these issues in the eye. In doing so, I only served to make myself immensely miserable.
Sounds awful, right? However, after a short period of feeling immensely bad about my life, this period of suffering served to show me how much better life can be once you make a positive change.
Some wisdom that I have gained from 2018 is that a person can be a burden on your life no matter how much they seem to contribute towards it. Emotional generosity is a whole other thing from monetary generosity, and there is only one that should ever be higher than the other. When the two are not in the correct balance, they only serve to create misery and guilt. The tiniest things that a person does (or doesn’t do) can begin to create unhealthy patterns. You can begin to lie to yourself about how you feel towards them, choosing not to acknowledge that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is terribly wrong. (From experience, I can tell you that this niggling feeling tends to be a sign that you seriously need to re-evaluate things).
After the year in which I was diagnosed with a pituitary condition – which will possibly always be the most difficult year of my life – 2018 was probably the second-hardest year I’ve lived. However, I now enter 2019 not as a new person, but already as a much happier individual because I have cut a person from my life that added absolutely no value to it. I always felt like Ineeded to try harder, whereas I now see that I was doing everything that I, as myself, was capable of. I was made to feel bad for valuing my friends and family above this individual, when I should never have been made to feel like I had to compromise in the first place.
Among the mistakes that I have made, there are some positives that I can also evaluate. One thing I know I did do right was to not cut myself off from my friends. I may have buried my emotions for far too long, but keeping physically close to so many lovely people, and building new relationships has really helped me to get through everything. In hindsight, I see that it is not healthy to keep so many things hidden away inside that hurt you; even if you cannot talk to your friends, you should always try and find someone to open up to – be it an anonymous helpline or a medical professional. These worries and issues will eat away at you until one day you snap because you cannot carry the burden by yourself anymore. And it can be the tiniest thing that causes them to culminate.
So here is my advice to you: although you will always make mistakes (reassuring, I know), do not allow them to make you feel terrible about yourself, but to see what matters most in your life. Then surround yourself with people that bring out the best of your personality and you will come out at least equal to who you were before. Perhaps even a little stronger.
To summarise, it can be good to buck the trend and stray from the ever-popular New Year’s Resolution. I’ve already begun 2019 feeling more content than I did for a great majority of 2018, so I guess that’s achievement enough in itself, right?
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