A Little Success, a Lot of Failure

So, the first of the year has come and gone and like many people my resolve to stick to New Years resolutions is waning. But let's back up a little bit …

In the Beginning
I don't have any hard and fast rules for New Year's Resolutions. Some years I have put it all on the line (generally that has resulted in failure). Some years I resolve to not have any resolutions (great way to prevent failure, bad way to foster success). This year I thought I would be smart and set myself up for success. I decided to set mini goals for each month, and once I was able to commit each month's goals to 'business as usual' I would tack on something new. The theory is that this would prevent me from being overwhelmed at first and would also give new goals every few weeks so that my interest would stay piqued. In theory … it should have worked.

January's three goals were pretty traditional. I did great for nearly the whole month. Slipped once or twice, but nothing huge and nothing that brought me down. The big bonus is that I also lost 7 pounds without even having that as a goal. Go me, I rock! But as the last week in January came and went it didn't go quiet so well. And that's when it started to unravel.

Bump in the Road
I could have just picked back up in February. That would have been a logical and rational response to what happened. I, however, decided to beat myself up and go back to the beginning. The best thing, I decided, would be to go at least two more weeks on January's goals alone to make sure that I would keep doing them. Then, if I succeeded I could pick up a new goal. There were two things wrong with this:
1 - this thought process accepts the possibility of failure as an option. Bad.
2 - it pushed out February goals which killed the momentum of the process. Oh, why must I be so self defeating?

Needless to say the next two weeks spiraled out of control and resulted in all goals being missed and feelings of defeat abound. At one point I even decided that I should just forget January's goals all together and move right to February. This might have worked, had February's goals been anything other than what it was: Keep an upbeat and happy attitude - acting happy will result in happy. Great goal. Hard to execute when my issue was feeling down and blue. Still, I managed to hold onto it for 3 days. And then yesterday I bottomed out and not only did January's goals not materialize, but February's positive attitude came to a screeching halt in a firestorm of pissiness. Poor Justin.

Rebuilding
The nice thing about a bad day/week/month is that it always comes to an end. And, at every end, you have a new beginning. Today I will reclaim my ownership of all four goals. I WILL do it. And if I slip a little it won't be failure, it will be par for the course. I don't know why we are so hard on ourselves. I don’t know why we naturally slip into self defeating habits. I don’t know why we focus on our failures instead of our successes. I don’t know how to stop it from happening again … but I resolve to try.

Let's Make it Official:
And until further notice, the current goals are (drum roll please)

• I will eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day
• I will drink alcohol no more than twice a week and no more than four servings at a time
• I will eat dessert no more than once a day and no more than one serving at a time
• I will act happy even when I am not. I will look at things in life as positive opportunities instead of negative effects