New Year Vibes

Hello and welcome back to my weekly thoughts!

Today I want to talk about how I look at the new year.

I believe it's pretty common to go into the new year with high expectations, "new year, new me", "this is the year I'll really change something about myself", stuff like that, I've definitely done that before.

That stuff can be fun, but in my experience it usually ends in disappointment, either you gave yourself a lofty goal that's too hard to achieve, or you set yourself on a path that turns out you weren't super interested in.

For the reasons above I don't usually create a very rigid group of goals, I've tried to adopt the habit of picking up small hobbies that are enriching and fulfilling, things that don't take too much time or effort but still produce some kind of tangible result.

I think it's also important to recognize that you don't have to start these things at the beginning of the year either, I understand the feeling of grandeur you can get from starting something at the beginning of the year, it's like setting out on a quest, but it seems quite inevitable that you'll lose your way at some point, especially if you're starting something unfamiliar to you.

After you break your chain of productivity it's pretty easy to give up as long as you're tying it to the year, I've found myself thinking things like "well the goal was to make changes this year, but I've already failed that so I'll just try again next year", but if you really want to become consistent you need to try again directly after you fail.

In the beginning you're going to fail a lot, so if you only get to try once a year it's going to take you a very long time to get it right.

This is why I use the beginning of the year to revaluate and reaffirm my goals, instead of using it to kick start them.

In this way my long term goals don't become tied to any year in particular, and I'm free to fail at anytime as long as I try again directly afterwards.

Perhaps you struggle with similar issues, if so I hope you enjoyed my perspective on the matter. :)

As always, thank you for reading and have a great week.