I love new beginnings: New Years, new months, new weeks, new mornings, new anything.
I’m the girl who goes to bed early when she has a bad day, just so I can wake up and have a fresh start the next morning. I honestly see each sunrise as a new chance to do better, to be better, and to inspire others to do the same.
Every year, as December winds down and as January creeps up faster than my weight during the holidays (if that’s possible), I start to get antsy for the New Year, anxious and excited for the inevitable tabula rasa that’s Primed to my doorstep, come January 1st. I start brainstorming New Year's resolutions around mid-December, and as the big day gets closer, I finalize what changes I want to make to both my environment and to myself.
But this year was different.
December flew by, Christmas came and went with a single blink, and here I sit the first week of January 2017 with no promises, not concrete plans for change, and not a single resolution in place. And I’m weirdly OK with it all.
Taking a moment to think about my usual resolutions, I realize that most of my usual New Year's promises highlight my insecurities: workout more, be happier, find the good, work harder, be kinder. These past goals of mine have repeatedly been goals because I haven’t been enough for myself; I continually created these benchmarks as a way to encourage myself, hoping that by executing these resolutions, I’ll eventually become enough – for others and for myself.
I haven’t made any goals this year. And not because I’m finally perfect and don’t need any, although, #iwish. I’m a firm believer in goals, and I also firmly believe that there’s always, always something to work on. But for the first time in possibly forever, January 1st has come and gone, and I’m simply OK with who and where I am. And where I’m not, for that matter.
I’m doing my best each day to follow the fire that’s inside me. Some days it burns more brightly, and consequently, some days are easier than others; but regardless of the day, I never stop pushing and I never doubt that I was meant to conquer whatever this life pushes my way. I’m nowhere near where I want to be – or where society subliminally tells me I “need” to be – but I’m here, I’m present, I’m me, and that’s enough for right now.
If tomorrow I wake up and feel emptiness and a need for improvement and a hearty self-check – I’ll do it. But today, for this moment right here, right now, I’m enough. And as foreign of a feeling as it is, damn does it feel wonderful.
May 2017 be your year of: contentment, inner peace, self awareness, and life-changing love. May it be the year you decide that you’re already enough, just as you are.
