For the last few years, I haven’t made New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, I tend to set goals at my birthday. I usually set a number of them. This is the third year that I’ve done this.
I like these goals to be personally meaningful to me. But as some of the longer term goal are reached and some of the smaller fears are conquered, it becomes more challenging. I don’t know how many more years I’ll be setting goals upwards of 3o at a time. The other challenge is that within a year, some priorities shift. Something you thought was important to you turns out not to be. I have, over time, learned to be more gentle with myself in this area. Before I would have seen an incomplete goal as a failure of sorts whether or not I still found the goal relevant to me. Before, not posting this on New Year’s Eve or on New Year’s Day would have made me feel, again, like I had failed and would take some of the excitement (yes, excitement) out of the goals that I’m posting.
Like many other people, the end of the year causes me to stop for a second and take stock of things. For me, it makes me take a gander at my birthday goals to see which of them I have achieved and which ones need more commitment on my part.
There are two goals, however, that I have on my 32×32 list that I have taken no steps, 3.5 months in, to make happen.
- Learning to swim
- Submitting my writing for publication
So, these are the two things that I am re-committing to at the dawn of 2011.