New Year New You

What if you didn’t have to completely re-invent yourself in the new year?

New year’s has always been my favorite holiday. I love the idea that you get to throw out old habits and the idea of fresh starts. Last year, I swapped things around. Instead of waking up on New Year’s as a new version of myself that, using the prior year as evidence, had never existed a day before in my life, I decided to just ask one thing.

Instead of using the new year like magic, I met myself where I was. I thought about all of the things I used to love but had gotten lost in the business of life. One of those was running (in the “loved-it-after-because-the-during-was-miserable” sense) because the benefit outweighed the misery of doing it. I started January 1 with the goal that I was going to run at least a mile a day until I loved it again. The first few weeks were miserable, but it was just 10 minutes- I could do anything for 10 minutes, right? To my surprise, about 2 weeks in, I felt myself wanting to go farther. I kept it up. And at the end of the year, I had run a full run streak and I had run over 750 miles through the year. That was more than if I had trained for a half-marathon or run other races. And it was…easy?

This year taught me a lot about the power of showing up, even if it wasn’t perfect. It taught me that it’s possible to get back things you loved after life tries to take them from you. And it gave me a really good reminder that you don’t have to make hard, massive changes to become a version of yourself that you are proud to be in this world. The routine, the steady, and the consistent does more over time than we often realize.

Maybe, instead of re-inventing yourself this year, you think about what your life looks like when you are the best version of yourself. In a world that is overrun with noise, take time to be gentle with yourself and think about what that version of you looks like. Have you been there before, or is it something you can visualize?

What was missing from that last year? Instead of re-inventing yourself, think of one thing you can add or take away to bring you closer to the version of yourself that feels the most alive.

Remember that, as we start fresh this year, we don’t always have to make massive sweeping changes to get to a life we’re proud to live.  Change doesn’t always have to be a struggle and it doesn’t always have to be hard. Sometimes something small, intentional, and sustainable can get us closer than a massive reinvention ever could.