I’m not one to set any New Year’s resolutions but I know most people do so I was thinking it was time to start blogging again. Let me begin by asking you a question. Are you a glass have full or a glass half empty type of person? Think on that while you read the rest of this.
Every year on the eve of the impending New Year we tend to look back over the last 12 months and we decide if it was a good year or a bad year, a success or a failure. The ups and downs accumulate into one overall feeling for that specific year. And every year after it you will refer to that year as the fill in the blank year. Maybe you call it the forgotten year or the fat year or the divorce year or something more positive like the happy year, the year of love, the year you finally graduated. Maybe this is just me but I tend to clump everything together and only choose to remember the big things that happened during the year and when I look back that’s all I really see in my mind. That was the year I got married. That was the year my grandfather died. That was the year I hated my body, etcetera etcetera. When we do this we miss all the other parts of the year that were important to us. Those parts that helped shape us into the person we are today.
But what does this have to do with succeeding or failing in 2017? It has everything to do with it! It’s all about perspective. When we set goals we expect to reach them and when we don’t how do we feel? Like failures. We promised ourselves at the beginning of 2016 we would lose 20lbs, we would save money for a down payment on a house or we would get that promotion or we would eat less fast food. Whatever our goal was it was really important to us and we had EVERY intention of keeping it. But now we are here in 2017 and 2016 is gone and we didn’t save up money for our new house, we went into debt, we never earned that promotion. We couldn’t stop eating playa bowls and only lost 10lbs instead of 20. We started to take part in the Netflix and chill trend and binge watched our way through the majority of 2016. So we look back and see failures. We see what we didn’t accomplish and we feel bad about ourselves and we feel even less confident about our new goals this year. And then we compound the problem by swiping through picture after picture on Instagram of all the people that accomplished their goals in 2016. We see everyone’s highlight reel of all of their successes and think even less of ourselves.
So how can we change this? How do we stop this cycle? Change your perspective. If we continue to look back on our year and interpret every single action as a success or a failure we will always feel like failures. Because in the end we did fail, even if we won a couple times we still failed. And for most of us THAT is the main thing that we will remember. Ricky Bobby said it best (yes I am quoting Talledega Nights) “If you ain’t first, your last” meaning you’re a success or a failure. There is no middle ground. STOP doing that.
Start now by changing your perspective. Maybe you didn’t reach your goal of losing 20 lbs but you did learn how to
eat better foods for your body, you are sleeping better AND stopped drinking soda. Maybe you didn’t save up all the money you wanted to or pay off those student loans but you learned how difficult it’s going to be and this year you will try a different approach. Maybe you struggled all year and you still didn’t do what you wanted to do but you gained patience and discipline. Maybe in your mind you did fail, you never got that promotion and you lost your job but in the process you learned how to be resilient.
So in 2017 make it your goal to simply learn. Learn from your experiences, grow as an individual and start viewing your experiences as just that an experience. There is no success or failure. Focus on how you have transformed as a person for the better. Be more positive about your journey. Be the person Thomas Edison was when he said “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”