Your New Year Resolutions Never Matter

Every time new years and my birthday comes around, it gives me the same new beginning feeling. So basically every 6 months, I have a crisis about who I am, what I’ve done, and where I’m going. No crisis to report this year. I welcomed the new year with peace and leaned in to what is my truth. I was bold and honest about what I want, what is meant for me, and what I believe is possible. I reminded myself that dreaming big is not reserved for the more fortunate and opportunity isn’t predetermined. Opportunity is energy that can be created. 

I realized that my resolutions don’t matter. Every year, I set the same requirements for myself to go to the gym, stop eating to the brim, stop picking my blackheads, add a new line of income. Every year I make these resolutions, but the issue is not having these goals to follow. It is the fact that until this year, I honestly did not believe in myself. I did consider myself worthy or able to create, manifest, and build anything that I didn’t already have. For real, that’s sad as hell. It’s so unfortunate how little we actually believe in ourselves. It’s absurd how we separate ourselves as “us/them” when we see someone with something that we want.

Part of me thinks that manifestation talk is so classist. If you believed then you could. Is that really true for everyone. Being a believer is difficult for those who do social justice work. How can I in the same breath say that I give not a fuck about cards dealt to me because I am the master of my fate, but also see systematic violence obliterate lineages?

I write a lot about internal dialogue and how important it is to speak to yourself with care and kindness. There’s no right or wrong answer here about belief and manifestation. It’s a lifestyle that you choose or don’t (watch the Pursuit of Happiness if you haven’t and you will understand how I have found peace with these contrasting ideas). I vote for keeping your internal dialogue clean and asking yourself not what your resolutions are but what has kept you from achieving them up to this point. It’s not goal setting, its mindset and behavioral shifting. Yes, they are sisters. But I say it doesn’t matter because what happens when you miss a day? What happens when you slip up? The resolution is done. You failed. You didn’t complete the 30 day challenge. You didn’t stay true to the promise. You fucked up. That’s it?

No. The resolutions don’t matter. What matters is how you treat yourself. Do you have a system for when you fail? Do you have a clean, healthy analysis when you fuck up? Do you support yourself through growth or do you tear yourself down.

How you internalize the choices that you make and how you analyze your patterns sets a serious tone for your day, week, years and overall life. The more negative you are regarding yourself, the more negative your life will seem. Simple laws. 

This was the first year that I made a vision board. I normally list out goals, make an extensive plan or an overly complicated brain dump. I normally stretch out my ideas and make them so elaborate that throughout the year, I look back to my notes and I’m confused trying to make sense of what I want or thought I wanted. This year, I kept it simple. I have grown into craving simplicity. And no, simplicity does not need to mean minimalism or frugal-ism.

Simplicity for me: creating systems, day dreaming, visioning, leading with love, allowing myself to want, always tending to my needs, sharing laughs with others, sharing smiles with myself.

Map out your wants. Make a vision board. And most importantly, create a system and conversation outline that you will have with yourself when you fail because you will. Success is not in absence of failure. It is in the strength of the rebound and the endurance to foster multiple resets back to back.

I affirm you will be successful.