New Year, New Thoughts to Persistently Living

Persistently Living New Thoughts New Year

I think i’ve said it before on the blog, but I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions. I dislike New Year’s Resolutions because it feels so formal for something as simple as a change in day and year. Why should I be making a change just because it’s a New Year? WHO MADE UP THAT RULE? When people ask me what my New Year’s resolution is, I tend to say I don’t have one. And that’s true, because I’m making changes to myself everyday and as often as I need to.

New Year, New Thoughts 

In December 2016 when I relaunched my blog, and again in October 2017 when I reinstated by blog’s purpose, I’ve come back to writing about topics that relate to the idea of creating a life I love.

(And if you’ve heard the saying, Rome wasn’t built in a day, you get where I’m going with this…)

Persistently Living–or creating a life you love–means that you’re continually working on yourself. Working on yourself and creating your life, is hard work!!

If you look back on who you were a year ago and who you are today, you can find so many things about you that have changed. I’m talking things as small as changing your hair colour, to bigger things like starting a new job or moving to a new place. But how many of those changes did you really plan for on January 1st of that year?

My whole anti-New-Year’s-Resolutions stance comes from knowing that what I set out to do on January 1st, may not be as accurate as what I want to do in April of that year. And I don’t want to make one of those resolutions that lasts for a week and gets thrown out the window, just to say that I gave my resolution an attempt.

So what is my New Year’s approach?

It has to do with the other part of Persistently Living–never giving up on yourself and what you want to work on. You may wake up one day and decide that you REALLY want to learn how to write code. And you may be really into that for a month, and then you may decide it’s not really for you. Maybe one day you come to the decision to quit that 9-5 you’ve been working to launch your own business. It’s something that you’ll likely be working on continually throughout the year and beyond.

Persistently Living Never Giving Up

New Thoughts, Significant Changes and Working In Small Steps 

If you have new ideas for how you’d like to change that pop up throughout the year, then why not work with those?

Having new thoughts and opinions that you work on as they come up and as you see fit, will allow you to create a much happier approach to your daily life. You can work on these every day, every week, or every month as much or as little as you need to, in order to create the change and results you want.

You see, it’s just not necessary to stick to that one  New Year’s Resolution if it’s not what you want as the year progresses. It’s better to look back at your year thinking you grew in your thought process and your actions each month, rather than looking at your single New Years Resolution and wondering if you did enough towards it.

Persistently Living Every Day

What Are My 2018 New Year’s Thoughts?

Well, it’s still fairly early in the year, but I have given some thoughts as to what I’d like to do so far. Like I said, these thoughts and goals are totally changeable and I’ll work on them as I need to. I’m not going to subject myself to my own criticism over thoughts and goals that change as I do. But here’s where I stand at the moment:

  1. I want to work more on my motto of Persistently Living. I want to share more of my thoughts on continuously creating a life I love to help YOU guys also create a life you love. I hope to share more of how this plays into my relationships, career, blog, and most importantly, my lifestyle and mental health
  2. I want to address my anxieties. If I learned anything last year, it’s that I still have a lot of anxiety. My anxiety is on similar topics that it used to be, nearly 10 years ago, but there are new aspects of anxiety in life that I’m still learning how to deal with. January is also a great month to start looking at these because it coincides with Bell’s Let’s Talk Campaign, which I hold very close to my heart.
  3. I want to embrace the fact that I’m a mid-twenty-something-year-old that has NO clue what they’re doing 95% of the time. Most days, I’m hit with things that I don’t know how to deal with. I sometimes sit there and wonder if this is what all adults feel like, but just have a better time pretending they have their S#*! together.
  4.  I want to be okay with my life going at a very different pace than other people’s. I think this is a topic I’ll go into more detail on in later blogs, but in late 2017, I noticed how much I let my life pacing bother me.
  5. I want to continue creating a personal brand that I’m proud of. Growing up, my parents always told me, ” You represent our name when you go out in the world”, which I thought was a silly saying…until last year. Last year, I realized how right my parents are. When you go out in the world and put your name out there, you WANT to be proud of what’s associated with your name. In the world of social media and blogging, I want to be making things and saying things that I am proud to stand behind.

What Are YOUR New Thoughts for the New Year?

Now that you know my opinion on resolutions, I want to know how you approach the New Year. Do you prefer to make a New Year’s Resolution for the whole year, or are you likeminded and prefer to change your thinking and goals as you go along?

Let me know down in the comments and get the conversation started! 

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2 Comments

  1. January 17, 2018 / 10:39 am

    This is a great post Vanessa! I agree with you about resolutions, who came up with this idea? That said, I set goals for myself each year but I use them more as guidelines and I don’t beat myself up about what I don’t achieve – instead I focus on what I did achieve.

    If it makes you feel better, note that I’m a mid thirty-something adult and half the time I don’t know what the heck I’m doing 95% of the time. 😉 I’ve learned to embrace it and accept it – I totally think that’s what being an adult is.

    All the best to you in 2018!

    • vanessa.kingson@gmail.com
      Author
      January 17, 2018 / 6:30 pm

      Thanks, Nicole! I would love to know who came up with New Years resolutions…They make it seem like it’s the most important thing. I love that you set goals for yourself to use as guidelines.

      “Focus on what you achieve” are great words to live by too! I’m also really glad I’m not the only one that doesn’t know WHAT they’re doing some days.

      Happy 2018!