The journey continues: On continuing efforts to achieve last year’s resolutions

It’s 2021! The beginning of a year that will, with any luck, be much better than the year before it.

I find myself in a novel position as we enter this new year. I find myself at the beginning of a year that follows another, during which I worked towards my resolutions throughout and didn’t give up.

In my post yesterday, I admitted that I didn’t achieved the majority of my New Year’s resolutions. In fact, I only accomplished one, which was to start managing my finances better. That’s a journey that began with me reading The Meaningful Money Handbook in early 2020. Now, I’m just doing my best to follow the steps laid out in the book and make good decisions regarding my finances.

When it comes to my other resolutions, I was either off by a small margin – for example, I only published 22 blog posts in 2020 when I had aimed for 24 – or I was way off the mark. The latter is mostly with regards to my guitar learning ambitions. (I didn’t make it as far through my beginner’s book as I’d anticipated.) In a couple of cases, I was prevented from achieving a couple of my goals by Covid, which I consider more forgivable.

Not reaching the goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the year was disappointing, but it is what it is. Rather than dwell on the past, I’m focussing on what to do about it moving forward.

For the majority of my unachieved resolutions, this year should see me closing them out. For example, if Covid restrictions allow, I will hopefully be able to retake my driver’s test and pass. (Second time’s the charm, right?) A year should also, hopefully, be enough time for me to work through the remainder of my guitar book. I’ll also continue working towards my #bodygoals, and so on.

So, my resolution journeys continue. And I’m okay with that.

Based on my experience in 2020, I know that I can keep my resolutions. And, even if I don’t make it to the finish line, I can make much-appreciated progress. That’s enough to motivate me to keep going.

Motivated to do more

Last year really wasn’t great for the world, but it was a fortunate year for me, as it saw me make a lot of personal progress. For that, I’m grateful.

In the past, I’ve struggled to stay the course when it comes to my personal goals but 2020 allowed me to prove that I’m capable of doing that. So, if I find myself doubting my abilities down the line, then I have a year of effort and progress to reflect on and reassure myself of what I can do.

With a year’s worth of growth in several of my areas of ambition, I’ve been able to start considering my goals in further detail and in the longer term.

With two years and more than 30 posts under my belt, my vision of what I want my blog to be is starting to get clearer. And, after a full year spent improving my guitar playing, I can actually imagine a future in which I consider myself a player and not just a learner. I’ve also been able to get to a place when I can start adapting my plans towards achieving my #bodygoals based on where I’ve gotten so far. I plan to do something similar in 2021 for other goals I’m working towards, changing how I’m going about my efforts and the time I dedicate to them.

Someone mentioned to me recently that goals always need to be modifying. It’s nice to be in that position, where I’m modifying and thinking about how to move forward, rather than starting again.

Making progress in the goals I’ve mentioned – which were long-standing before 2020 – has also allowed me to start thinking about new ambitions. Because I’m no longer stuck trying to make headway towards old ones. I already made a start on this in 2020 and began taking a British Sign Language course.

Old goals or new, I find myself feeling more motivated to work towards them than ever before, and I suppose that’s just a benefit of keeping at it for this long. I’ve seen how far I can get, and that makes me want to get even further. To do that, I guess I just have to keep going; keep taking each next step in my journeys.

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Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my post.

To anyone out there with New Year’s resolutions, or working towards any goals, good luck and I hope you achieve them. However long that takes.

For those of you that have set yourself new New Year’s resolutions or working towards new goals consider reading my post New Year, New Me?. Just a perspective shared from one goal-setter to another.