"Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived." -Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

I first heard this quote a year or two ago when I randomly stumbled upon Blake Rhiner's YouTube channel and I knew I had to write about it. I will link the video at the end of the article because I often return to it and Blake's channel when creativity is difficult to tap into. His videos are insightful and personal, with the perfect smattering of witty, dry-humor, and I highly recommend watching his work.

As this is the beginning of a new year, a wave of motivation for self-improvement has washed over everyone. We love being able to say we did something every day or habitually for an entire year. However, we (myself included) tend to talk so much about our goals that we send ourselves into a psychological spiral through receiving the same or similar gratification we would for successfully having completed a challenge we implemented on ourselves before we even endeavor to begin, thus there is less of an incentive to actually complete our goals.

I am not telling you to keep your goals to yourself because accountability does wonders, just be aware of the way you discuss your goals (especially this early in their pursuit) and of how you react to the goals of others so as to keep yourselves on track and motivated, and avoid being your own road-block.

One of the main ways in which we can hinder ourselves in general, as well as in the context of New Year's Resolutions, is perfectionism.

Continuing with the idea, in Anne Lamott's words, New Year's Eve is kind of like cleaning your house, dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing, the whole shebang, to be ready for the following day and the New Year, only to establish in a color-coded list all the ways in which you can dirty the smallest amount of your house instead of learning to live in your house efficiently and clean up after the mess, or even have a healthy amount of mess.

No wonder we find ourselves disappointed at the end of the year for not ending up where we wanted, and our house is not even clean anymore.

We want to go the gym so many times a week, read through our Bible in a year, and eat better every day for a year without messing up once, no mistakes, no sign of missing a day. No mess, no clutter. Soon, our goal quietly shifts from trying to learn or break a habit to trying to not fail at learning or breaking a habit.

Focusing on trying not to fail will turn your goals into hoops to jump through in a certain order, which will lead you to not follow through. This is like when my family came over for Christmas and we played Taboo. Two teams form and pick one out of four colored squares that have a term at the top that someone is supposed to describe for the rest of their team to guess without saying the words in the term itself or the five or six forbidden words underneath.

For example, "Horse Race" was what someone needed to describe without saying Kentucky Derby, jockey, or race track. It seems impossible, but only if you just concentrate on what you cannot say.

Multiple cards were put aside when people said something they were not supposed to, which is the rule of the board game but not your resolutions. We want our resolutions to be perfectly executed and to make us perfect, and when one or both of those things does not happen, we give up. When we make a mess, we give up. Or even worse, we do not even try to clean our house in the first place out of fear of leaving clutter behind.

"But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived."

Do children not play at all when they realize that they will have to clean up later? No. Because strewing toys everywhere in the process of having a good time is completely worth the time spent cleaning later and they learn just as much from playing as they do from cleaning up afterward.

So make messes, make your goals meaningful, and do not fear making a mistake with your goals to show 2018 that you are living a full life that is not contingent upon having an immaculate house.