Like the majority of the world I had planned for this January's motto to be “New Year, new me." So far though it has been “New Year, same me.” I haven’t consistently been following my resolutions, I have allowed the stresses of life to still get me down in a way that I promised myself I wouldn’t, and there are still relationships that I have yet to initiate fixing. This month did not go as planned for me, but I refuse to allow that to dictate what the rest of the year holds and neither should you.

I wish I could say that the “new slate” feeling of the New Year could just automatically give us one. Unfortunately the New Year doesn’t change things with the snap of a finger: the emptiness we feel, family issues, poor health, broken friendships, or life’s stresses in general. We start off the year with this amazingly giddy feeling that the problems from 2016 won’t follow us because we have "let go and truly put it in the past." That’s not how it works though, is it? It takes time to let things go and God only knows how long it could actually take to truly put such a disastrous year as 2016 into the past. Our problems are still our problems and they don’t just disintegrate the moment that the New Year countdown ends.

So those resolutions that you made that didn’t even last the whole month? That’s okay. There is a reason that they are called New Year’s resolutions. It is okay to take the whole year to get them right, just don’t give up all together just because you lost sight for a bit. It would be so easy to say “Oh well, there’s always next year," but I can promise that this will only make the incline of the uphill battle of bettering yourself that much steeper. The beauty of it all is that we have eleven more months to try and get it right and I know that we can.

Always remember that good things take time. Don’t give up and wait for January 2018 to try starting all over again, instead work towards January 2018. Give yourself this whole year to learn and grow. Take time for yourself, go after those dreams, and swallow that pride to have the people that you love next to you. No matter what, just keep going and keep fighting for those resolutions because you deserve them and every other great thing that this year holds. Who knows, it may just hold that new slate you've been looking for.