New Year’s Resolutions, 2020 Edition

When I look back at my ambitious 2019 New Year’s post, I feel really embarrassed. The only part of that post I managed to deliver on was Eastside / Westside / Love. Everything else… well, I think you know.

It was embarrassing enough that I had pretty much decided not to write a New Year’s writing resolution post this year. But that’s not the direction I want to go — the direction of backing away from goals due to past failures.

I think it’s healthy to set goals and strive for them, despite past failures.

But on that note of past failures, I’m getting tired of that, too. I don’t want to back away from goal setting, but I also want to consistently achieve the goals I set.

For most of 2019, as my rose-tinted New Year’s Eve post last year proves, I set goals that I completely failed at. They were unrealistic and short-sighted.

Uff. But unrealistic or not, that’s like getting punched in the gut, failing to meet goals over and over like that.

From my time working as a personal trainer, and before that as a meditation teacher, I observed that people really begin to give up on themselves when they start breaking the promises they make to themselves. Once they break enough promises to themselves, they develop a self-concept of being a loser. They may mask it well on the surface and don’t “look” like a loser in their daily lives, but inside, they feel like they aren’t capable of change, and so they quit trying to change.

They come up with all manner of excuses. “I don’t have time” has to be the #1 excuse, which is basically the same as “I’m too busy.” But this can’t be true, because people who are busier than they are DO find the time to [ fill in the blank with: exercise, eat right, meditate, spend time with their family, etc ].

I broke a lot of promises to myself in 2019. I don’t want to be that person in 2020. No more excuses!

The fine balance: Set ambitious goals, but without breaking promises to yourself.

I inevitably get ambitious this time of year, but then I go and bite off more than I can chew. Really, I don’t know what I was thinking this time last year. I thought I was going to write four new novels WHILE going to school full-time and student-teaching full-time?

That’s ridiculous!

The four realms of goals for 2020

So for 2020, I have four general areas in my life I want to improve: My mental health, physical health, spiritual health, and vocational health. These, I assume, are the four realms of goals for pretty much all of us. (Oh, and I include “relationships” within “spiritual,” because I connect healthy, mutually beneficial relationships as being part of a healthy spiritual life. Not where I might have placed relationships in the past, but I do now.)

I’m doing something different this year. I have set some grand goals for each of the four realms for 2020, but to help me meet those goals, I’m creating smaller, concrete 30-day goals that relate to my big 2020 goals.

What about you?

My friend was telling me that she and her husband sat down and thought about 2020 as a decade rather than 2020 as a year. I thought I was into goals, but a ten year plan! Hats off to them.

Do you have New Year’s Resolutions? How about a ten-year plan? What promises have *you* been breaking to yourself in 2019 that you’re determined to change in 2020?

P.S. The manuscript for Soldier of Dorsa is currently at 192,040 words. I’m so close to being finished I can practically taste it. 😀 And as long as we’re talking goals… I plan to finish the complete novel by Sunday. It will probably take the rest of January to edit, but that means a completed novel by probably mid-February.