It's January 30th and I just worked on my New Year's resolution for the first time. 🤷‍♀️

To be honest, I don't believe in New Year's resolutions per se. I do, however, believe deeply in the importance of intentionality and habit change, and to the extent that New Year's spurs that on for people I'm all for it. But New Year's has rarely worked for me personally. That arbitrary "date of beginning new habits" inevitably creates a cycle of guilt (or, worse, and more honestly, shame) that undoes my best intentions, setting me even further back instead of forward.

So this year while I did have a habit change in mind - reconnecting with my long-neglected creative energy through writing in any form that is NOT focused on a product - I gave myself the grace to get to it when the time was right AS LONG AS I was acting in values-aligned ways while I wasn't taking action.

By "values-aligned" I mean that the only things that I'd allow to take the place of my writing time would be activities that are an a priori higher priority to me. Presence for my family and my coaching clients top the list and, lo and behold, January was a month soaked through with legitimate, time-sensitive family needs. Supporting my family members' needs was a higher priority than getting to my "New Year's resolution" - and any remaining time in each day was happily client-centered - so I gave myself permission to be present, to believe that the "intensively-present" period would eventually abate (at least temporarily!), and to trust that I would truly seize the moment when it finally arose.

And done! It happened!

What's tomorrow? I can't say.

But I WILL be back to this healthy habit, I know that for sure. And, finally, in a sustainable way.