Ripples Not Resolutions

Can you believe we’re already through the first month of the New Year? I for one am beside myself at this revelation as it seems that time is no longer waiting for anyone. Speaking of time, like clockwork the dawning of a new year comes with the inevitable question , “Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet?” Frankly, I have never been fan of this annual tradition. Year after year I witnessed friends and family proclaiming the things they plan to do away with, accomplish, finally attain only to circle back to these goals and discover that not a single box has been checked. This may become an unpopular personal opinion, but I believe the second one ties a goal to the term “New Year’s Resolution” it is bound to fail. Hear me out. While resolutions can call for some much needed accountability, they also can add undue pressure and anxiety to achieve certain goals in an unrealistic and unhealthy time frame. Additionally, when such goals are not achieved, one is left to the possible feeling of being a hypocrite or a failure, or worse, both. I have come to discover that I don’t want resolutions…I want ripples.

Stay with me here because this is going to get deep in more ways than one. When I was in college, I would make New Year’s Resolutions faithfully. I loved creating goals and planning for the future; a forward thinker at its finest. While simultaneously striving to get my degree and reach my resolutions I found myself without fail in a pool full of tears. One year, I crushed my classes, but barely touched my resolution. Another year my grades suffered while my resolutions soared. Both scenarios left me feeling unaccomplished and frankly unstable. Now one could easily say, “Shayla, you were simply too hard on yourself and far too much a perfectionist.” I would say you’re right and also add that I was striving for an unrealistic and unhealthy way of traversing life altogether. One night I decided that my tears of disappointment would be turned into something triumphant! Right then and there I decided to take my silent tears and make small ripples in the waters of my unsatisfied soul. My ripples became making tiny, attainable changes to my daily lifestyle that lead to unbreakable healthy habits. I actively chose to find minute moments in my day for joy and laughter that lead to a ceaseless and sustainable cycle of selfceare. I reveled in every achievement I made for it is only my approval and standard that matters. Slowly but surely I found myself shifting the tides of my life’s story so that when the waves were made known in the distance, I no longer feared them, but welcomed them confident that what was coming to me was actually always coming for me. I made ripples out of rain.

Now I’m not sure who needed to read this, but maybe you don’t need the pressure that New Year’s Resolutions give. Maybe you simply need to look at the pools that keep pulling you under and find ways to make ripples that can carry you over. Gather that water well of woe that you’ve been accumulating. All you need is one stone of inner strength and your inner child that believed you could achieve anything. Together, skip that stone and watch the ripple turn into a rushing wave that is the culmination of your tiny, attainable daily practices turned habits rise and crash to meet you on the shore of your worthy soul. It sounds heavy, but if you decide today to take tinier steps, you’ll not only lighten your load, but uplift your life. However you decide to “tackle” the goals you have for 2023 do know that you have a choice…you can make a resolution…or you can make ripples.

I love you

Shayla

(P.S. Serendipitously, this song couldn’t be more fitting for this post. Listen to it and I dare you not to have it stuck in your head…in a good way)