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Stop Aiming for Perfection
I love New Year’s Resolutions
I love New Year’s, and this year I love it more than most. I think we’re all done with 2021 and hopeful that 2022 will have better things in store.
But I’m excited about every New Year’s Day, whether the prior year sucked or not. I love the hopefulness that comes with starting over, even if it’s just a date on a calendar.
I like closing out the old year and tidying things up. I love looking back on how my kids have grown and how we’ve done financially. I delight in making goals for the year.
I often don’t live up to my resolutions. I will not make it to the gym every day or publish an article every day. Often when the goal is to do anything every day, I will fail within a day or two.
A few years ago, I started setting goals for the year that give me time to catch up later on even if the year doesn’t start off on the right foot.
If I want to walk 10,000 steps a day, then I set my goal as 365,000 steps for the year. It’s more forgiving. If I mess up on day one, I don’t need to abandon the goal as useless.
It lets me make up for bad days later, and it allows me to work ahead if I know that I won’t have time to work on things during certain periods.
