Happy New Year 2025

If you know me at all well, you know that I don't make new year resolutions. To me resolutions were always a whole lot of pressure and they very quickly got mixed up in everyday life to the point where I would forget them or give up on them, so about a decade ago, I decided to take a different approach to starting a new year, one with less pressure but greater likelihood that I would keep going with it because, even if I forgot for a while, I could return to it and remind myself of the commitment I made, and even better, I can check my plans against it to make sure that I am actually living my commitment to myself in practice. So instead of SMART goals or resolutions, I make promises to myself about who I want to be, how I want to live and what I want to do during the year. Some years my promise has been very short and to the point, for example covid year my commitment to myself was simply to live through it. Other years there has been more of a list of commitments. Since I have started the year this way, I have kept the vast majority of my commitments and when I haven't I can always see the reason why progress stalled or, a couple of times, why something else replaced that particular thing. My new year commitments allow for flexibility, and growth while reflecting the reality of the world I live in, where I can't predict how well I will be or for how long, which means that failure is always an option, but failure within kindness.

 

So for 2025, my commitment to myself is: