On Resolutions, Failure, and Perfectionism

 

Tonight, everyone will resolve to do better for the next trip around the sun. We’ll pick ourselves apart, looking for the ways we are supposedly failing: Eating too much, drinking too much, not exercising enough.

For one year, I will exercise for 30 minutes every day!
Next year, I will spend less time on Facebook!
In 2019, I will not use curse words!

Maybe it’s true. Maybe you will start saying fracking and balderdash without ever looking back longingly at fucking and bullshit.

It’s possible that you’re a self-control guru – but only when you’re faced with a new year and a fresh start. Every other day of the year, you know you couldn’t do it, but on January 1st you are a damn miracle of condensed will power.

It’s probable that you’re going to use your eventual failure at your resolutions to beat yourself up, to devalue yourself, and to give up completely. You missed two days at the gym, so why even bother going back?

I feel like New Year’s resolutions set most of us up for failure. I should know; perfectionism sets me up for failure all the damn time. I see no reason to go out of my way to do it on purpose. Which, I suppose, is its own form of perfectionism. Is it better to have tried and failed or to never try at all?

My compromise

Five years ago, I decided to do monthly resolutions. It felt like an attainable goal. I did not pick them all out at the beginning of the year – I made lists of ideas and chose what I was going to do each month, just before the start of a month. It’s a lot easier to avoid soda in May than in all of 2014. A month is hopefully long enough to break a habit and then decide for yourself if it made enough difference in your life to be worth continuing.

There was a moment in October of that year when I realized I didn’t want to continue with the monthly resolutions. I had just started therapy, which felt like enough work thankyouverymuch.

Calling it quits without emotionally eviscerating myself was its own form of growth. I was proud of myself for the things I had accomplished, the habits I had broken and the new ones I had started. Letting go of the monthly goals did not feel like failure.

So, here we are, facing down a new year. 2018 sucked in ways that I could not have foreseen on this day last year. It ripped me open and then kicked me in the guts. Over and over and over. Most of the good things that did happen were a direct result of something that tore my life apart. I’m exhausted and emotionally hungover. Part of me wants to stay small and quiet and not risk enraging 2019. If I expect good things to happen, the universe will smite me. Any optimism or hope is its own form of setting myself up for failure.

But then, is it better to have tried or to just lie down and let myself continue to be kicked?

So, with that in mind, I’m going to revive my monthly resolutions. Not because I feel like I have to or that I need to prove something to everyone, but because I want to. And that’s it’s own victory.

I’ll go easy on myself for January. No caffeine/soda and I will put loads of clean laundry away before starting another laundry cycle.

Considering two months ago I could barely get out of bed, maybe these are no small things.