“Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip toe if you must, but take the step.”

It seems it is tradition that every 365 days, we try to change our bad habits and we sit down with a cup of coffee and piece of paper and make a list of what we want to change in the coming year. Most often it probably is quit smoking, quit drinking, be more organized, exercise, which are possibly the most popular resolutions.

I am sitting here with a cup of coffee, but I for one will not be making any resolutions, I know I am going to break every one of them at some point. I don’t plan to quit drinking, well mostly because I am a social drinker. I need to be more organized, but I knew that every year, so this coming year is not going to be any different. So just because I write it down on January 01st as opposed to February 10th is not going to make a difference. I still know it and I might make feeble attempts to be organized but would I be successful would be another question ? For the most part I don’t want the pressure on myself and then be disappointed that I could not live upto my own expectations, so why set myself up for failure.

Instead of resolutions I need to set some goals for myself. Winning the lottery is not a goal even though I would like that . I would say my biggest goal is not to procrastinate, I used to never be one, but it seems recently I have become that person. I would say my non-procrastinating has already started. I always had this idea of wanting to throw a dinner party, well I did that on Christmas day, so in my world that is a start to non-procrastinating.

My next biggest goal is running a full marathon and running a full or half marathon in a different state from which I live in. I need to find time to read more. I buy endless amounts of books, that sit beside my bed gathering dust. Mostly this is because I get on my computer to look at something and I have gone down a rabbit hole of looking at various other things and the book sits forgotten again.

It seems like the word resolution is over used at the beginning of the year and the power of the word is over estimated. We hope or at least most of us hope that by using the word resolution we would change our habits or patterns of doing things. That rarely happens. I have been a slave to the word resolution for years, I don’t recall ever sticking to it though. Losing weight, being organized, is the least of my priorities right now. I have more important things I would like to achieve in life and for that I need to set goals and before goals I need ambition to ensure I make the goals.

Most of us set ourselves up for a resounding sense of failure by making resolutions and breaking them a few weeks into the year. If something needs to change in our lives, it has to happen no matter what time of the year it is and not because it is the expected norm for us to have a long list at the beginning of the year, because society deems it.

My list of goals are endless and too long to write here. There might be a few more days to the beginning of the New Year, it does not mean I am not going to start working towards those goals. I have already started with my dinner party. Will all my goals get achieved in the coming year ? Your guess is good as mine. But I will continue to strive towards them, next year and the following years despite the months changing.

At the end all it takes is one small step in the right direction and to keep striving along without giving up. Knowing what changes need to be made is a small step in the right direction. I have constantly postponed, hoping against hope that in the new year, making resolutions would result in a miracle. But that is not to be. So here I am, instead of fooling myself with the word resolution, I instead choose to strive to meet my goals.

I wish everyone the same, don’t stick to something because it is the beginning of the new year, but chose to chase a dream, because that is your dream and that is what you want for yourself.