Back when I started high school and finally made friends, I positioned myself as outgoing and often the life of the party, and my social calendar became jampacked and remained that way since. I met David, who’s also social and outgoing, and when we combined our friends and social calendars, our weekends overflowed with fun, friends, food, and drinks. Moderating it all has proven to be challenging for me because I was so used to being social, but the over-indulging directly opposed the healthy life I now wanted. I was always mad at myself for making choices that didn’t support what I wanted for my life and, thus, not accomplishing my goals.
Goals and change, though, often don’t happen as quickly as we’d like them to.
I said I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions mostly, but I do set annual goals for myself. I choose them much more mindfully now that I have been doing it for eight years, ensuring that they’re attainable, and in 2023, I took “health” off my list and chose:
- Finish repairing/remodeling our home
- Start the surrogacy process with David
- Decide how/where David and I are going to get married
Each month, I determine which smaller goals feed into my bigger goals; each week, I track progress and reflect on what went right and what went wrong; and daily, in my journal, I track feelings and events that happen that influence my success in achieving goals.
The surrogacy and planning to become a parent has brought health onto the goal list, a bit covertly, because if I’m going to be caring for a child, I need my health excellent, and it’s given a “WHY” to it like never before.
Over the weekend, I was reviewing my journal, and since picking up the pace on surrogacy, I’ve seen a massively notable improvement in how I’m caring for my health. The number of drinks I’ve had for the past few months has been at or below my target, the indulging in desserts has been minimal, and because I’ve been kind to my body, my mind has felt sharper and better than ever.
When it comes to making big changes or going after audacious goals, the “WHY” is critical, and I’ve found it’s not something that can really be faked. We all care about our health, but when it came down to it, my “WHY” just hadn’t been there the way it is now—on top of the surrogacy, over the past couple of years, I’ve been learning a lot about how what we put into our bodies affects how we feel. And in addition to wanting to be around to take care of our baby, I also have found that I’m often able to say no to dessert or alcohol because if I abstain, the next day, I’m generally a bit more ready to take on the world.
These days, I’m spending an enormous amount of time writing, and as I pitch my work to be published, I’ve been met with rejection after rejection. I applied to a writer’s workshop in Italy in early 2024, and on Friday, I got rejected as well. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that when it comes to creating art and putting it out in the world, I have to remain positive and trust that when the timing is right, I will be selected, but no amount of force is going to make anything happen. There’s an energy around art that needs space to breathe, and I realized there is extreme value in applying the same philosophy to any big goal.
Now, I’m feeling a sense of peace I’ve never felt before about where I’m at in my life—some things are in my control, and with added effort comes faster results, but some things just need to happen in their own time.
Since realizing this, I’ve also found a new sense of grace for myself—David made the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life last week, and I’ve probably had 40 of them. 40! We’re socializing like crazy for the holidays—dinner, drinks, and desserts—and it’s actually been incredibly fun after being so diligent and disciplined as I’ve been focused on my goals. We all need a little break from all the seriousness of life.
So, as you set your goals for 2024—challenge yourself, but be realistic. You need to consistently be able to celebrate small wins to keep yourself going, but more than anything, you need a solid “WHY.” This might not be the year you get your health perfectly perfect, but it might be the year you finally get your budget ironed out. Try to focus less on what you “should” do and more on what you really “want” to do. Change is a process, and failure is unavoidable. Your best chance at succeeding in 2024 will come from an authentic drive inside you with self-forgiveness for when you slip up.
Don’t berate yourself when you fail; befriend yourself—during the successes, but most importantly, during the failures because they offer the biggest opportunity for growth.
