Hello everyone! I hope that you all had a good first day of 2019! My day was packed full with sledding, being freezing cold because of sledding, drinking hot apple cider at home after sledding, and finishing up a project that I started a few days ago. It was a pretty full and I daresay productive first day of the new year! What did you do this January 1st, 2019? Let us know in the comments!

I haven't really done New Years resolutions before, even though it is a pretty big thing that a lot of people do every time the new year comes around every 365 days. I don't know... I suppose I just never got around to doing one. It has always seemed slightly, well, intimidating. I mean, write down all of the things that you want to do in the next year and then do them. (As a writer this should be a piece of cake, but no...  Actually, the hard part is the doing part.) This year, I think I finally realized what my aversion has been. I tend to not make long term goals, and the reason why is because if I don't end up meeting that goal in the time frame that I want to or at all, it can be pretty discouraging. Thus, in order to avoid failure to meet any long term goals that I may have, I just don't make very many long term goals to begin with, or any at all. 

Unhealthy? 

Probably.

This is definitely not the best way of thinking. Of course we should have long term goals, things that we work hard towards. Having long term goals build character, especially if you follow through with it. How would we grow in perseverance without big goals that we aspire to meet? 

For me personally, I think that fear of failure plays into this thing of being unable or not allowing myself to make longterm goals. It is both disappointing and discouraging when I'm seemingly not succeeding or giving up on whatever I had dreamed of doing, (whatever goal I wanted to reach,) but giving up on making goals isn't the right answer either. For example, there is a book that has been circulating amongst some friends that I really had been meaning to read for quite some time. I put if off over and over again. Every night as I got into bed I would see it sitting on my desk on the top of the pile of books to read, practically begging me to pick it up and start to read through it. I almost felt as if it was taunting me... A very uncomfortable feeling as you well know.  Now, if you know me, I love reading. It's one of my favorite things to do and it always has been. I would fall asleep in my bed as a little girl reading and re-reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books over and over again. It's strange for me not to be pining away to read something. Now fast forward in time to the same place where I just left off a moment ago. I'm standing by my desk, fighting a silly battle in my head on whether or not tonight would be the night that I started to read this book. I would look at the book that I knew that I needed to read and tell myself, "I'll read it tomorrow night." Guess what? "Tomorrow" night I would look at the book and say the same thing again. This went on for months. For some reason, I couldn't make the commitment to reading one chapter of the book every single night before I went to bed, even though I really needed to read this book. I realized later while talking about it with a friend that this was because of this strange aversion I have to making goals. If I missed a night, it would become two nights, then three, then four, and so on. Too afraid of disappointing myself, I inadvertently avoided it, unwilling to face failure once again as I didn't meet a standard that I had set for myself. (I've made it almost all the way through the book now, just so you can have some resolution to the story.)

I've realized as time has gone on that this isn't something new that's just recently sprung up. This is part of a bigger issue that is now out of control and spreading to other smaller issues like reading a book that you need to read but being unable to read it because of some silly fear that is eating away at you that you'll mess up again. 

  To succeed, you have to have action. You have to be doing something. You can't just make a goal and have it finish it on it's own. A goal requires work. It requires perseverance. Maybe some people's level of stamina is higher than other's for that sort of thing. Either way, giving up is not the answer! I decided in my head at some point along the road that if I couldn't do it right,  I wasn't going to try at all. Wrong answer. If you don't get it right the first time, you try again. Failure is not an option, or at least, it shouldn't be an option. I think that sometimes we make it one, though, like I have with goals. In purposefully not having perseverance to keep on keeping on, that's failure in and of itself. I failed before I even began because I started out with the attitude of "I probably won't make it this time, either." 

I don't even know if all of this is making any sense as I'm trying to write this down, but what I'm trying to say is even if we don't finish something that we started, we cannot just curl up on the ground and accept defeat. Giving up isn't an option! Don't let yourself be crippled by a high expectation of yourself. Instead, re-evaluate your expectations. Chances are they really are too high, because we tend to be pretty hard on ourselves a lot of the time. Don't be! You've accomplished a lot being where you are right this moment, and you can always aspire for more. Don't limit yourself based on things that you consider failures from the past. In fact, don't limit yourself at all! Even if we messed it up a million times we would still have the power to pick ourselves back up again and try again, as long as we don't accept defeat and we don't give up. 

The simple truth is this. I crippled myself with a lie that I wasn't going to be able to do it "right." I was going to mess up again, so why bother? At least I wouldn't have to disappoint myself again. In the end, however, it only resulted in more disappointment... A deeper disappointment that I didn't even try at all. 

With that in mind, consider making that your new perspective this year. Even if you don't struggle with making goals because you're afraid of failing as I do, you can still apply this concept to other areas of your life. Positive thinking greatly impacts our outlook on life! I know it does mine. Fear of failure doesn't have to be a part of us. Failure itself doesn't have to be a part of us. It doesn't define who we are.  Sure, sometimes we mess up. Sometimes we mess up really bad,  but it never has to become us. It only becomes you if you make it become you. Be FEARLESS in what you set your mind to do. 

All that to say, I'm making some goals this year! It's just part of the first step to moving past fear and into something better. I won't be perfect at it at first, but I hope that it will get easier. My number 1 goal is to move past this! This might take time, but nothing is impossible. I would encourage you this New Year to take that first step doing something that you have avoided for whatever reason. Start to overcome. Start to heal. Tell other's about your journey! I know that it will be rewarding.