I have not made any New Year's Resolutions at all. New Year New Me is a terrible idea I think. You get all these lofty ideas about how this is the magical moment in time that you will become all you ever wanted to be. I call BS in the highest regard. You will not be able to sustain the "New Me" wholesale changes for the entire year, because they are almost always too lofty. The human will is resistant to change, and it is most certainly resistant to wholesale change. So let's say you are uber good and manage to go 2 months with all your resolutions,and that is being super generous. Most folks are done by the end of the week and even more by the end of the month. Then that one little slip happens in one of your resolutions. It may not even be a big thing. Maybe it is as small as say having a mini candy bar out of habit. What happens next? I know personally, that would lead to complete meltdown. And despite the fact that not eating sweets was only one of my resolutions, I would see that as a complete failure on my part, and backwards I would go, with my resolve unraveling.
Here is the sad thing, I was successful for X amount of time, but I didn't count that. Only the failure counted. That is the focus, I failed. But here is the things I have come to realize. Partial success, it's still success. You changed for that X amount of time. You showed yourself that it is possible. It won't be seamless, but it also isn't impossible. If you were good for a week, but slipped up, yeah it sucks, but hey, have you ever been good for a week before today?
I have been struggling with getting my momentum going, and so I have been in deep thought about why I was so easily motivated in 2010-2011. I still can't figure out why I was for all intents and purposes, flawless in that time period. But while debating how to get back there, it dawned on me, I don't have to. I need to focus on the present and what possibilities the future holds. So here is where I am. I set out to change several things about my eating habits a while back. Some I have been good at, some are spotty, some I have failed miserably at. But I have spent time being successful in all of them, and like I said above, that alone shows that it is possible for me to succeed at my goals.
What is the secret to moving forward? I don't know exactly, but I am going to give this a shot. Take for example the bane of my existence, my seeming inability to end the snacking at night. I have managed on two occasions to make it two nights in a row without snacking after supper. But I failed right? No, I just didn't have long term success, I had partial success. My plan moving forward is to rather than give up and keep on snacking after supper, I now have a new goal. To not snack after supper for 3 days in a row. It isn't much, but babies don't start walking in one day, now do they?
