Welcome to 2023, and Happy New Year! The end of the year and holiday season were a great time. I truly enjoyed it. We celebrated Christmas all month long. Because I put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving this year, I was ready to take down our decorations and get the house back in order a few days after Christmas.
Do you set New Year’s resolutions? I never really get into setting a resolution for the new year, but this year I am feeling more motivated to create better habits and actually stick with them.
Here’s what I am hoping to focus on this year:
Better health - physical and mental
More optimism - personally and professionally
How do you actually achieve your goals? For me, just stating my general goal does not tend to result in me achieving it. I need to have a plan for how I will achieve it, including what steps I can realistically take and stick with to help me accomplish my goals.
Better health
Several mini goals are a part of me improving my health. I want to lower my A1C and reduce anxiety in my daily life. I’ve lived with type 1 diabetes for 32 years, and it doesn’t get any easier. My blood sugars have improved over the years, especially when I was pregnant, but it’s still a struggle to get my A1C to remain consistent and at a level I am happy with. I think this will always be the case. Perhaps this year I will be able to navigate it a bit better if I focus more on my overall physical and mental health.
I’ve started weight lifting and trying to consistently work out every week. Right now, my goal is to work out five times a week, but we’ll see if I need to make any changes. I tend to work out for a few weeks and then something comes up that prevents me from working out, and I get out of my routine and it slowly takes a backseat. This year, I am trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.
More optimism
I like to view things that happen with optimism. But then the pessimist in me starts to whisper, “What if…” and I struggle to get back to the positive outlook that I wish I could retain. I am not clear on how I can get out of this way of thinking. Perhaps forcing myself to look at things in a positive way - and recognizing when I am being negative will help me. “Assume positive intent” is something I try to tell myself, but too often I end up thinking more about those cynical what-if situations.
I think part of why thinking more positively is hard for me is because I tend to think about the action and outcome of something versus the intent. Just because someone had no intent of hurting you and you still got hurt, doesn’t make it any less painful. It just tends to make it easier to accept someone’s apology. This is something I’ve been struggling with. My hope is that trying to look at things in a more positive light will help but only time will tell.
New Year, new me in 2023… doubt it but it’s catchy. Here’s to hoping we can all slowly accomplish at least some of our goals this year.
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