January 1st, the one day with the power to cause reflection in almost all of us. Although we all know that it is in fact just one day, it often represents so much more.
It is a benchmark that we use to track our own successes, and a day we try to construct new goals to attempt to control how the following year will go. Yet nearly every year, we are disappointed in ourselves and our ability to accomplish our resolutions for the year before. It is not always that we are undisciplined, but sometimes it is just that life is unpredictable. Maybe your goal for last year was to maintain a GPA of 4.0, but during the year events led to a deterioration of your mental health and subsequently, you were unable to. It doesn’t mean that you should double down on yourself, but maybe you should take the time to reevaluate your life and set more attainable goals. After all, your goals should be about progression. Even if it is small, a step in the right direction is still worth celebrating. It can be difficult not to compare yourself to others, I mean, how can we ignore all of those Facebook posts from people reflecting on their wonderful years? Yet, it is important to remember that people only show the very best version of themselves on social media. A few images and good memories shared are just that – a few. It doesn’t mean that they had no trying times, it just means that they are choosing to reflect upon the good ones. While it is great to reflect upon good memories, it is incredibly important to think about our mistakes and the difficulties we have faced. As the saying goes, a mistake is only a mistake if we do not learn from it, while hard times that we do not cause for ourselves test our character. They tend to be defining moments where we choose how to react and what to take away from certain situations. If you feel as though your year was overwhelmingly trying, think about how you reacted to each difficulty. Are you proud of yourself, or do you regret your decisions? How will that experience guide you in the future? Regardless of how 2017 was, 2018 is a blank slate. Do not be confused in thinking that you can control everything that happens to you in the coming year, but you can control what you learn from the experiences, and how you handle them.
