As each year winds down, the res­o­lu­tion rhetoric be­gins to pop­u­late our so­cial spaces. Be it on­line or in face to face con­ver­sa­tion, many of us re­flect on the year that’s com­ing to a close, while we plan all the amaz­ing things we want to do in the New Year. I’ve of­ten found my­self, year af­ter year, caught up in the hype of cre­at­ing this mas­ter list of things that I ab­solute­ly need­ed to ac­com­plish for the fol­low­ing year.

Sad­ly, one of two things would hap­pen: I’d ei­ther not ful­fil the list which would leave me feel­ing de­spon­dent, or if I did in fact com­plete it, I’d still be un­hap­py, and I’d ques­tion the point of do­ing all these things be­cause of the amount of un­nec­es­sary pres­sure I put on my­self. Then I’d go through it all over again the fol­low­ing year. I even­tu­al­ly grew weary, fed up of this cy­cle that I’d put my­self in; and de­cid­ed a few years to make one New Year’s res­o­lu­tion that I’ve stuck with to this day.

That res­o­lu­tion, was to make to no more New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. I re­fused to let this an­nu­al list of things I have to do hang over my head. So, in­stead of the gener­ic “for year of xxxx I want to do a, b and c,” I took a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ap­proach to my goal set­ting.

One of the first things I did was look at that ex­ten­sive list of things that I had not yet com­plet­ed, and break it down. I start­ed with small­er goals and then worked my way up. This has helped me tremen­dous­ly. For ex­am­ple, in­stead of say­ing that you want to read 100 books in 1 year, try start­ing off small and build­ing on it. You can start with three, or maybe even five books in one month. If you fin­ish all the books you planned out be­fore the month is up, read more.

Add an­oth­er book or two on to your month­ly goal with each pass­ing month and by the end of the year you could very well not on­ly hit your read­ing tar­get, but sur­pass it too. When our goals are fo­cused around larg­er num­bers, we can be­come eas­i­ly in­tim­i­dat­ed. Break­ing down your year long goal in­to small­er goals makes it way more man­age­able.

At times, even when you break your goals down in­to more prac­ti­ca­ble tasks, you can still drop the ball. Af­ter all, life can get in the way, and there will be in­stances where we don’t get to car­ry out all that we aimed for. Not com­plet­ing a task can eas­i­ly de­mo­ti­vate any­one from achiev­ing their goal, but you can’t al­low your­self to wal­low in self-pity.

Get back up! Do not let one set­back stop you. Re­mem­ber that none of us are per­fect. We may not get it right the first time, or even the sec­ond time. But not get­ting it right off the bat does not mean that you will not get it right at all. In the words of the late Aaliyah “If at first you don't suc­ceed, dust your­self off, and try again, you can dust it off and try again, try again”

Have you ever made a res­o­lu­tion, and just want­ed to get it over and done with for the sake of check­ing it off your list? This was me. Back when I was hell bent on mak­ing res­o­lu­tions every sin­gle year, I would be so caught up in try­ing to com­plete every­thing my list that I would end up not en­joy­ing what I was ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to do. Now? I take the time to re­al­ly live in the mo­ment and en­joy the present with­out hav­ing the list hang over my head, and be­cause of that, my goals are no longer some­thing to just tick off a list, but some­thing to tru­ly ex­pe­ri­ence.

One of the best things I could have done to move away from the cy­cle of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions was to stop com­par­ing my­self to oth­er per­sons. Many times, our goals are of­ten dri­ven by the fact that we see oth­er peo­ple achiev­ing theirs, which is fine. How­ev­er, we have to re­mem­ber that every­one’s jour­ney in life is dif­fer­ent. Com­par­i­son can be the thief of your joy and in many cas­es, when we look at what oth­ers are do­ing, we of­ten pin­point the ar­eas where we are lack­ing. I have strug­gled with this in the past, and still do from time to time, but now, I con­tin­u­al­ly try my best to be cog­nisant of the fact that I have to find my own way, and that it may take a lit­tle longer or short­er than oth­ers to get there.

In all of this, I urge you to not wait for the new year to make changes in your life. Don’t let the nos­tal­gia of the hol­i­days be the cat­a­lyst for you want­i­ng to bet­ter your­self. You can set your goals any time you want to. If you get off track, start again. If you feel frus­trat­ed, step back, take mo­ment, and start again. And re­mem­ber, if at first you don’t suc­ceed, try again.

Tshenelle Bethel-Pe­ters is a nat­ur­al hair, beau­ty and lifestyle blog­ger; an avid sup­port­er of buy­ing lo­cal and a lover of ran­dom shenani­gans. Fol­low her at www.aday­ibthe­life­ofnellyb.com or @blessed­nel­ly on Twit­ter and In­sta­gram