Where do I find the reset button?

Halfway into January.

Uh what?

Oh, you couldn’t find it either?

Wait, let me check…

Nope. Not there… And also not there.

Also, no, you’re not alone. I’m here with you. Can’t seem to find it anywhere.

The new year always comes so jam packed full of high expectations and resolutions and goals. A plethora of gyms, fitness clubs and any other genre of mental and physical health and wellness business ventures pushing out information and marketing about taking advantage of the new year. Like everything changes the moment we can throw our 2020 planners in the trash can and start over fresh on January 1.

“New Year New You”

To top it all off, everyone and their dog was so done with 2020 that our expectations for 2021 were a whole lot bigger than setting some new fitness goals.

*Cue riot on Capitol Hill*

So far things are going incredibly well this year 👍🏽 🗣

Realistically, 2021 feels like a bad sequel that just didn’t live up to the hype.

But hey, you know what? It doesn’t have to stay that way. You don’t have to be ready to set new goals on January 1. Turns out that the perception of time is totally on us. Tomorrow is tomorrow whether it is January 1 or August 14 (my birthday, in case you were wondering). So if you woke up on January 1, 2021 feeling exactly the same as you did on December 31, 2020…. it’s okay. You can set new goals WHENEVER THE HELL YOU WANT.

The new year isn’t  about “resetting” and pretending 2020 didn’t happen. It’s not about starting over. It’s about learning, growing, changing, and adapting. It’s about becoming more resilient.

Sometimes that process looks like sharing space with someone and trusting that it’s okay not to feel okay. This has been a hard year. Absolutely yes it’s so important to set goals, re-evaluate, and re-goal when you need to. Yes, we need to learn and utilize skills to stay focused despite the resistance.

But an even bigger yes is to be compassionate with yourself. Check in with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Sometimes we have to take a breath and sit with the fact that we have been through some real ish this year and take a moment to collect ourselves and feel our feelings.

It’s hard to think about setting your new year resolutions when you just spent the last year isolating from your friends and family and making sure you have an extra mask in your pocket and enough money in your account to pay rent. In addition to that, I’m not even sure how to phrase the social and political state of our country with words.

Everything that is happening and has happened around you, affects you. Your biological needs for safety and security, love and connection – these have to be met before we can thrive as happy, healthy, goal-oriented, self-esteem positive, self-actualizing humans.

So if you weren’t in a place to completely reset on January 1, just know that you are not alone. You will get through this and be stronger and more resilient for having overcome this in the long run. Be kind to yourself; be kind to others. And remember that we are better together (even if it’s over a zoom call).

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash