The One About Resolutions.

Happy New Year! It's 2020 y'all.

Before you roll your eyes too much at the title because maybe you're someone who can't stand New Years Resolutions because we all know they'll be broken by the end of January. And you're right! Maybe they will be.

But maybe they won't be.

I'm often a pessimist disguising myself as a realist, but when it comes to a new year and the opportunity to implement some fresh changes, I like to be a little bit of an optimist.

Let me have my moment. Please.

source: unsplash.com - Cristian Escobar

Both last year and this year I came up with around ten goals or resolutions. Don't worry - I'm not going to give you all ten in today's post. Some of them are just for me, but I think some of my goals could also be good lessons or thoughts for others!

The list I made on my phone is relatively point form and maybe even a bit ramble-y or hard to follow if you're not the one who wrote it aka me. My resolutions are in no particular order other than the first one, so keep that in mind!

1. Be more gentle with yourself.

Self-gentleness (is that even a term? probably not) is my top goal for the year. As many of us are, I'm my own worst critic, and it's pretty bad sometimes. I almost expect absolute perfection from myself while at the same time knowing that achieving perfection is entirely impossible. It's a bit ridiculous. And I don't have this mindset toward anyone else - let me just clear that up. It's very easy for me to have grace and understanding with other people, but for some reason I struggle to hold that same standard for myself. So this year I want to work on it. The past couple years a saying I really liked was "grace upon grace". I think that ties into this pretty well.

2. Don't verbalize your inner critic.

I actually saw this resolution shared on someone's Instagram story; they had people send in a resolution they had for themselves and this was someone's submission. I felt punched in the gut when I read it because I verbalize my inner critic all the time - see previous goal wherein I stated that I'm my own worst critic. Sometimes it can be funny because someone will make a comment where a good self-deprecating joke just fits perfectly. But at the same time, every time I make a self-deprecating or self-critical comment (even if it is hilarious), I remember a time a couple years ago when one of my close friends told me straight-up that they hate when I make those comments about myself. That's followed me and haunted me ever since. I think this year is the year for me to really think about the lies of my inner critic before I decide whether or not to say them.

3. Attempt to be less reactionary.

Living in a house with eleven other people for the last quarter of 2019 taught me that I'm far more of a reactionary person than I ever thought I was! And I'm not a huge fan of it. This is another area where I want to really think about my reactions to things/situations instead of immediately reacting. But in this goal, and the previous one, I remember my first goal - the main one. See, that's why the self-gentleness (it's really not a term🤷🏼‍♀️) goal is the only one that is in a particular spot on the list. Being gentle with myself ties into each and every one of the other goals I'm setting for myself.

4. Two blog posts a month.

See, I've got some practical resolutions in here too! I'm not entirely about "bettering myself" or whatever you want to call it. I like to have a goal of how many blog posts I expect myself to put out every month. If you've followed along since the beginning (five years ago!!!!!), you already know that some years I clearly did better than others. In 2018 (the second half of my fourth year of Bible school), I pretty consistently published three posts a month which was a pretty incredible feat in and of itself considering that was my most full and stressful year of school probably. I thought I could keep that up, and had my 2019 goal be three blog posts a month as well. Which really didn't happen. I feel like I only put out three blog posts in the whole year, really🤪. So this year I thought I'd be realistic and bring my goal down to two, seeing as I'm in an entirely different season of life where three posts every month just isn't practical. I should've seen that last year already, but I wanted to aim high.

5. Get off social media by 9:30pm.

I hesitated to share this goal because we're already a week in to 2020 and I have pretty much completely failed at this one so far. And by "pretty much completely" I just mean completely... This is a goal I had for myself last year as well, and I had the "downtime" setting on my phone so that I would feel guilty bypassing that to use a social media app after 9:30. At some point last year, I turned off "downtime" so I wouldn't feel guilty anymore, and I have yet to turn that setting back on. I should really get on that. Okay, I just did it. This may still be my most failed goal by the end of 2020, but we'll see. It may just be harder for me to stop being reactionary, ya never know...


So there you have it! Five of my ten resolutions for 2020! Let me know if you've made any, and feel free to share them with me if you like. We can help each other out when it comes to keeping our goals, or perhaps you can just inspire me with yours! 😌