“We are all asking way too much of ourselves in far too little time.”
At the beginning of this month, many of you decided to embark on some sort of New Year’s resolution. Maybe it was to lose 20 pounds and go to the gym every day. Maybe it was to eat better. Maybe it was to study harder and get better grades. Maybe it was to get more sleep. (Those were mine, anyway.) Whatever it was, if you’re anything like me and many of my friends, you may have already given up on it. The lines at the gym are already significantly shorter than they were three weeks ago. Some of my friends and I made a health and fitness group chat at the beginning of the month and no one’s posted in it in 5 days. But, I think there’s a reason we all get so discouraged, and I think there’s a way to overcome it. I was thinking of making this a listicle, but I realized I can’t, because it’s so much more of a journey than a step-by-step process. The truth is, we’re asking way too much of ourselves.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my room, and I take a long, hard look at my surroundings. My room is a total disaster area- clothes strewn across the floor, overflowing trash cans, old empty food containers, bottles and cans lining my dresser and desk, topped off with an unmade bed. I get up and move some clothes to look in the mirror, my soft belly hanging over the top of my jeans. In frustration, I turn off the lights and go back to bed. I tell myself I’ll handle it tomorrow. Isn’t this the exact type of defeat I was working against? Didn’t I promise myself through my bullet journal and my planner that I would avoid getting to this place again? But, yet again, I feel ashamed because I’ve been doing this to myself for months- years, even- and nothing has changed.
I think about it, and the first thing I ask myself is, what exactly is it that I’m trying to do? Like, I’m trying to “be a better version of myself” and “have a better lifestyle”, but what exactly does that entail? It entails a great deal of things- cleaning up after myself, eating healthier, exercising daily, meditating, studying and doing homework every day, writing things down in my bullet journal, always attending class, getting the proper amount of sleep, taking my medicine, attending therapy every week…
How many things did I just list there? 9? 10? My head circles around this somewhat existential “to-do” list because by the time I list the last few things, I forget what the first few were. So I have to start all over. And while I’m still making this mental list, I can’t start working on any of them.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has a never-ending laundry list of things they’d like to improve about themselves. We can always improve- physically, mentally, socially, spiritually… but where do we start? I realized the only way to start is to break these tasks down, one by one, into specific attainable goals.
Don’t expect yourself to be perfect overnight. It’s better to slowly improve than to never improve at all because you scared yourself out of it getting overwhelmed at the idea of doing it perfectly. For example, maybe you have a friend who trains at the gym for two hours a day every day. You join them once, and feel so exhausted at the end that you don’t want to even look at a treadmill or a set of free weights for another month. It’s too much if you’re not used to it! If you can begin getting yourself to work out for 15 or even 10 minutes a day, that’s a start. Maybe you want to eat healthier- at lunch, swap out a usual side of fries for a side salad. Maybe skip out on dessert every other day. You’ll probably be more successful doing that then trying to go from scavenging the dining hall every day to eating like some Instagram-famous clean, vegan, and gluten-free figure, because you won’t change that much, and you know you won’t.
Once you’ve figured out a plan for all of the things you want to change, one by one, you can begin implementing them. Work on some one day and some the next. As you begin to slowly improve, you’ll like yourself and be a little more proud of yourself every day. Keep friends and family around who support you, as they’ll be proud of you too. Another thing I’ve recently learn to accept is you can never quite say you did it- we are always finding new ways to grow and change and be better. We will be working on ourselves until the day we die. That’s one of the beautiful things about life.
There are parts of myself I don’t even know yet. That’s simultaneously a beautiful and terrifying thought. It’s good to always think about what you can do to be better. But take it slow, or it won’t work. It’s so easy to get disappointed in ourselves. We all know success takes hard work. But, enjoy the journey. It can be fun. I’m not writing this article having come out on the other side- I’m writing it in the midst of planning and self-discovery, and I know that we have to appreciate every baby-step accomplishment along the way.
