Motivation

I feel like I start each year with the same blind optimism with which I started the last. I happily list my New Year's Resolutions (or goals, as I tried tricking myself into thinking of them as this year) in my journal, and tell myself, 'This is the year I'm going to get it together. This is the year I make great strides towards having a healthy and happy lifestyle. I'm going to become a real life version of the smiley woman on multivitamin packages and granola boxes, just wait!'

The sad truth is that too often and too soon my optimistic list becomes a record of my failure to change. And it's so frustrating - because I really do want to stop biting my nails forever, I want to get more than 5 hours of sleep every night, and I finally want to make it  through one non-fiction book in a year. I don't feel like I'm setting an unrealistic bar here!

Unfortunately, my problem is that as soon as I have a bad day where I miss some of my goals, everything goes down hill. I end up sabotaging myself and feeling frustrated and guilty about things until the next year when the whole cycle starts again. This can't be healthy.

This week has been fairly typical, which is not what I was aiming for, and which is why I'm writing this post. I had big goals this week - in bed by 11, up by 6, running 3 times a week, no food after 9 pm, at school by 9 am...I was going to be disciplined and energetic. And everything went perfectly well on Monday, but then yesterday happened. And then today. And now I can feel my spiral starting and I want to stop it before it goes any further.

I feel like I should acknowledge (in a somewhat public way, rather than just to myself in the bathroom mirror every morning) that yes, there will be missteps, and I will not meet my goals every day. Goodness knows chocolate can only be refused so many times before one spontaneously combusts...but I'm going to try to not give up on things this year, even when they start going wrong and I feel like I'm failing.

These photos were taken (by the amazing Bente!) in New Mexico, and have no connection whatsoever to the theme of this post other than they make me happy and remind me that things can be excellent (like the chili hot chocolate that was in that cup, or the hot air balloon ride over the New Mexico desert! Life can be SO GOOD!). But they seemed appropriate once I reasoned them out that way to myself.

I did try to find a picture that fit better with the theme, but all I could find was this. Which is, actually, appropriate, but not quite with the spirit of things :)