New Year’s Day comes with all its trappings. Before long I will see a plethora of joggers in new looking lycra pounding the pavements and signs springing up everywhere for weight loss clubs. Social media will fill my screen with adverts from the latest guru about how to declutter, cleanse, live my best life and succeed in my relationships and all resolutions to lose weight, get fit, live with intention and purpose.But what if you know you left 2022 truly giving it your best efforts and it was still an abysmal year, or peppered with sadness, hard things, and difficulties? I won’t be making resolutions, because I’ll very likely fail at the first hurdle and why would I put that pressure on myself? Let’s face it, I still have a house full of chocolate and Christmas cake so that intention to shed a whole load of pounds isn’t happening this week. If I am to go in to 2023 with any kind of resolution, it’s simply to set the goal to treat myself with kindness and a bit of compassion. I will tell myself at the stroke of midnight 2022, and today and tomorrow and the next, “job well done, girl.” Because every day I wake up, show up, take part, and do anything, whether that’s hiking a fell, or having a cry in to my coffee, is in fact, living my best life. So, it’s time to stop telling myself I need to improve, compete, have as tidy and beautiful a home as I see in the pages of magazines and all too frequently on the social media pages of friends. It’s time I stop letting myself feel less than in some way. It’s time I be my own best cheerleader and extend grace for my messy life that is definitely not Facebook neat, Instagram filtered perfect or measured by the number of likes on my status. It is in the details, in the mud on my boots, in the pink petals on the cactus and the wag of that tail that knows how to live fully in the moment joyfully. It’s at every turn, and this year I’ll endeavour to take it as it comes, the good stuff, the bad stuff and the downright ugly stuff – all of it, with no resolutions and no pressures on myself, just living simply and simply living the best life I can.
