Saturday, January 1, 2011

Real Women Don't Need New Year's Resolutions

Every year is the same. The new year rolls around and I'm faced with the decision about resolutions.  Will I choose a set of resolutions (or even just one) to work on again this year? If I do, I'm setting myself up for that pathetic cycle of failure and guilt that I have spent a lifetime trying to stop. If I don't, I look like someone who's not interested in self-improvement.

As I was pondering this little dilemma (that loomed larger as the new year approached), it occurred to me that self-improvement is a year-round activity.  Establishing goals and action plans to achieve them is an ongoing process, not just something that you do once a year.

Real women (those are women who live in the real world, with crazy schedules, family obligations, and more tasks than time) live in a continuous improvement mode because we simply can't afford not to.  We don't have time to make the same mistakes over and over again (even though we do sometimes). If something is not working for us, we can't afford to wait until January to change things.

When we fail, we try again.  When we fall down, we get up.

You see, failure to achieve a goal within a certain period of time isn't so devastating when it's just a normal part of your life, but when it is elevated to the status of an annual resolution, it becomes a much bigger deal.  Why?  Just chalk it up as one of life's mysteries, like why men won't ask for directions or where the second sock goes to in the dryer.

So I, being a real woman in the truest sense of the term, choose to live my life in a state of continuous improvement, rather than  raising the stakes (and the stress) by making a resolution once a year.

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Read more A Writer's Journey.

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