Around the beginning of the year, there is always a lot of Internet chatter about the correct or proper New Year's resolutions and what you should and shouldn't do in the upcoming year. In my opinion, a lot of people complicate the concept of a New Year's resolution or take on a total self-reformation, one that, most likely, they will not succeed at accomplishing. I am all for the healthy-eating, exercising, and positivity goals, but I think a lot of people forget that a resolution doesn't have to be an entire rebranding of you as a person. As I enter 2016, I am committing myself to rewinding. Not in a "I'm going to relive the past" kind of way, but in a way where I am going to force myself to sit down at the end of each day and rewind what happened that day, while being thankful for the good and dismissing the bad.
I am the kind of person that holds onto things. For months, for weeks, sometimes years. I am the kind of student that lets the test grade from early January still affect me in May. And let me tell you, that is an unhealthy kind of person to be. I tend to hold onto the bad and dismiss the good, a very topsy-turvy way of living. This turns me into a snowball-rolling-down-a-hill ball of anxiety, it just keeps building and building until the end of each semester when I need about five days of just laying in my bed in the dark to get over what just happened for the past five months. Not good, and certainly not fun for me or anyone who has to talk to me at the end of any given semester.
So, I am not telling myself that I am going to completely change. I am not telling myself that I am going to turn into a carefree person with no anxiety and no worry; but, I am telling myself I am going to change small things each day, until these small things turn into big changes. I am going to actively sit and think at the end of each day, or couple of days at the beginning while I am getting the hang of this whole meditation thing, and reflect on what happened. I will be thankful for and smile about all of the good that happened and I will process all of the bad and move it out of my mind. I will accept and learn from the mistakes I made, possibly schoolwork blunders or fumbled social interactions, and I will try not to dwell on them. Hopefully these mini-reflections will become an everyday routine, allowing me to de-stress along the way.
I am not sure exactly what this process will change, but I am hoping it will lessen the daily or weekly anxieties. It is exhausting to replay things over and over in your head, or to beat yourself up over a test that occurred weeks ago. I have plenty on my plate to exhaust me each week, I don't need to be carrying the previous weeks' exhaustions with me on top of it all. Nobody needs to carry that much weight around, especially not us college kids that carry enough already.
