I have come to think that January 1st is a terrible day for new beginnings. It’s like setting ourselves up for failure. In the northern hemisphere, the days are dark and cold and short. We’ve just been through an exhausting month of holidays and all of the excess that can come with it. If we were prehistoric peoples, we would probably just be trying to make it to the warmer weather and the abundance of new shoots and berries that would come with it. We would be saving our energy.
But modern society demands that you not listen to your body calling you to rest. Set goals! Get back to work! You must pay for the time you took off for holidays you didn’t create!
Between the weather and the fatigue, it is a terrible time for promises. I actually think the first day of spring would make a nice day for resolutions. Plus, what if you just don’t want to be constantly striving to achieve or improve? What if you would just like to be content with who you are and where you are in life? We are constantly inundated with the message that we aren’t good enough. We must be striving to be thinner, richer, happier, more successful, more desirable, just in general MORE. At what point are we enough? At what point can we say, “I’m good, thanks anyway”? There is a media machine at work to keep you feeling discontent. Money to be made from diets, cosmetics, skin care, home fitness equipment, gym memberships, self help books, virtual workshops and courses. You can’t possibly achieve contentment on your own! You must pay all of these experts to tell you what you want and to declare when you are finally good enough!
Except that it will never happen. There will always be a product to sell you. There will always be a new study that contradicts a past study that then leads you to a new diet or product or way of living. We can’t continue to put our self worth in the hands of society because society will never allow us contentment.
We must decide that we are enough. That our lives are enough. We must decide for ourselves the changes we want to make, the things we want to strive for, or if we even want those things at all.
I purposely didn’t try to achieve anything the first few days of the year. I was exhausted from December. The holidays, house stuff, physical stuff, a new medication. They have all created a perfect storm of exhaustion. I would have been setting myself up for failure to try to begin again in a body that could barely get out of bed. There are some things I would like to work towards, but they didn’t have to start on January 1. They can start anytime. I have the rest of my life and calendar days are arbitrary markers of time.
Rest. Replenish. Reflect. And then, when YOU decide, IF you decide, get started on your goals. On your terms. Not a random square on the calendar.