I've always loved the idea of New Years. I love the chance to begin again. I love a fresh start. I love the principle of it all but making New Years Resolutions has always rubbed me the wrong way.

I think I'm too young to remember a time when New Year Resolutions were taken seriously because I can only recall seeing news casts and articles about "How to stick to your new years resolutions" and how gyms are always full the first two weeks of January then dead for the rest of the year.

My problem with New Year's Resolutions is that a lot of people create hefty goals for themselves and I don't like putting that kind of pressure on myself when I know I can't fully commit to it. I think it's unreasonable for someone to say they're going to go to the gym five days a week to lose weight. If you want to lose weight by going to the gym, be realistic and say you'll shoot for two or three days a week and if you have a week where you're able to go more times than that, then that's awesome but you shouldn't feel bad about yourself if you only made it three out of five times.

I feel like the only people who should create extreme resolutions are those who live extreme lives. If I set a goal to travel to four new places this year, I know that that would be unreasonable for me since in previous years I've traveled an average of once a year. I just don't know why someone would want to set themselves up for failure like that.

I like to celebrate the small victories.

In 2018, I made a goal to stop using plastic bags and use reusable bags instead. And I did manage to stop using plastic bags and I feel good about that. Change takes time. Growth takes time. Baby steps will get you to your goal the same way huge leaps will. So maybe I didn't lose twenty pounds, but I started eating more vegetables and I cut out a lot of red meat products. I didn't travel a lot but when I did, it was a great time.

Regardless of these thoughts, goals are still good. Personal growth is amazing. So I still make my goals each year. This year I want to:

Read five books.

I made this goal because I know I'm a slow reader and life gets busy so I don't always have time to read.

Shop local

instead of at big corporations and this might be more expensive for me, but it's important for me to support small businesses.

Write more blog articles

I'm not setting a number of articles I want to write but just doing more will make me feel victorious.

Another important thing to note about resolutions...it doesn't have to be a new year to make new goals. It's always a good time to start bettering yourself. You just have to want to do it.

So go on and set your goals, but be kind to yourself about them.