New Year, Same Me?

The new year comes with a lot of baggage for some people. We place unrealistic expectations upon ourselves in the form of new years resolutions to then be disappointed and feel as though we have failed. Many of us are guilty of this, even myself.

Picture me on December 31st, 2016, one year fresh out of school and first year of university complete. I told myself that 2017 was going to be the year that I changed my study habits from being the serial procrastinator I had been throughout my senior years and had carried these habits into my university studies. Don't get me wrong I was happy with my grades, however all the unnecessary stress and anxiety that came along with leaving things to the last minute was bothering me. I wanted to take the reins and work consistently on all my assignments completing everything leaving plenty of time for thorough exam studying. The clock then struck midnight and all of a sudden I felt something come over me, I no longer felt the desire to procrastinate and as I returned to university I smashed out all of my assignments weeks before they were due! No, I'm sorry, I lied. This was unfortunately not the case, instead I had continued to leave every assignment I had until the last minute and gave myself an unreasonably short amount of time to study for exams again. December 31st, 2017. I felt like I had failed. Thinking back to my optimistic self 365 days earlier, I felt as though I had let him down. But I hadn't. What I had done was create unreasonable expectations setting myself up to struggle and inevitably give up. After putting things into perspective I was able to forgive myself and decided instead of fixing my habits, I would improve upon them step by step rather than making a drastic change. New Year, same me, but I was better. 2018 I made the effort to get a feel for my assignments early, understand them completely and chip away at each of them throughout the semester and it was amazing. I felt accomplished, not because I got where I wanted to be, but because I had made the first step to getting there. So as we have entered 2019, if you have set yourself some goals or resolutions, take a look at them, treat them as your final goal, break it up into steps and treat 2019 as the first to achieving the great things that you've set for yourself. Keep all positivity from 2018 with you. As for the negativity, address it, learn from it and leave it in 2018. 2019 is a new start and another chance to be fulfilled.