Changing Everything Ends Up Changing Nothing

I just couldn’t wait for the ball to drop. Because in that moment I would be reborn anew, ready to live the best year I would ever live.

New Year’s Day. It’s January 1st and I’ve been gifted 365 pristine days to evolve into the highest, most elevated version of myself. A new year. A new me.

And this time I mean it. 

The vision of what I’ll grow into just one year from now is rather exciting. Those personal and professional goals all accomplished just as they were planned. New habits, new belief systems, new energy collectively elevating me into this unstoppable force, an epic transformation and a life redefined. 

Sometimes, though, trying to change everything ends up changing nothing.

And nothing usually did.

Failure and frustration have taught me that heading into a new year one of the first things I need to manage is my expectations. No matter how well thought out my intentions are, no matter how strong my motivation, I’ve learned that meaningful and sustainable change happens incrementally. 

At some point, multiple New Year resolutions transition from an exciting new start to a pressure-filled need to accomplish all that I’ve committed myself to. The process of undoing engrained habits is quite challenging. Rewiring our identity takes a great deal of discipline, attention, and patience, further complicated when more than one point of focus is diluting our attention.

Changing everything ends up changing nothing.

Resolutions had always been fueled by my own level of self-loathing and discontent, when I had finally gotten to the point where what was was no longer good enough and I was ready to dive in. All in. Diving all in left little room for patience, and my lack of patience greatly contributed to my consistent lack of success when it came to turning resolutions into reality.

I no longer wait for January to start making the changes I want to make in my life. I start when I’m ready to start. And when I do, I take on only one area of change to work on, to commit to, to focus on. New habits need a tremendous amount of attention if we want them to take root and flourish into a core component of our being. 

Gone is the self-imposed pressure of needing to accomplish multiple things at the same time come the start of a new year, replaced by allowing myself to grow incrementally and patiently on a schedule which greatly increases the probability of me reaching my desired objective. 

When we give ourselves the needed time and space to thrive we are far more likely to actually do so.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash