Reflecting on 2013

Happy 2014, readers!

I wish you all the best for the coming year! (:

One of my resolutions for 2014 is to try to write a blog post every day. (Yes, please notice my italicized caveat.) Therefore I decided to start off strong this year with a (quite appropriate) post about New Year's resolutions.

Every New Year's Day makes us feel wonderful about ourselves. We can finally forget all of the shortcomings and disappointments of the year before and start over completely anew. This is what makes this particular holiday so magical. New Year's Day makes us feel powerful and ambitious. In fact, it makes us feel a little overly ambitious. I think we all have been guilty of writing absurd, lengthy lists of new year's resolutions (at least I know I have been). 

Last year my English teacher made an interesting, effective recommendation to my class that I wanted to share with all of you. Instead of writing new year's resolutions to do things that we had never accomplished before (like run a marathon if we hadn't even finished a 5k for example), she suggested that we all write a resolution to continue to do something that we were doing well at the year before. This would force us to reflect on all of our successes (and not failures!) of the past year. Doing so would make resolution writing a more positive, helpful activity. Sorry, that was a bit wordy. I will provide you a simple example. 

I performed exceedingly well (a little too exceedingly well) as an eater last year. Every day I ate a large amount of all sorts of fantastic foods including (but not limited to) good ole' wholesome fruits and vegetables. Therefore, one of my resolutions for 2014 is to continue to eat lots of raw, organic fruits and veggies! (Well, preferably moderate amounts...but you get what I mean.) 

See my positive reflection on my 2013 achievements (minus my parenthetical insertions)? ;D Do you also see how reasonable my resolution was? I think I could definitely achieve this as opposed to an extreme, overly ambitious resolution to completely cut all carbohydrates out of my diet for the year. (Yeah, that probably will never be possible for me.)

So my homework for all you readers out there is to recognize one thing that you did well at last year and resolve to continue keeping at it in 2014. Be proud of all you've done in 2013. You are all awesome.