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I don't really 'do' New Year's Eve. I've never done the whole giant party thing. I'll either stay in and watch Jools Holland, or maybe go out for a meal with a couple of friends. And much as I don't do much for New Year's, I don't do resolutions either. I said in my first post of 2010 that I made one resolution years ago, which I kept. That was not to make any more resolutions. I'm very good at it as well. 

However, there are always things that could do with changing. These days, I'm trying to be all about the realistic goals. It's one of those jargon-y 'buzz' terms, but I think trying to keep things 'SMART' is actually a good thing. If you've not come across this before, it stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable  Realistic, Time controlled. 

But why should we confine these sorts of changes and decisions to New Year? The problem I find with New Year's Resolutions, is that they have such a huge amount of hype and pressure behind them that by the time you've reached the second week in January, you're setting yourself up for failure. From that first day of the year, fulfilling whatever goal you've got can seem huge. A year seems a long long time from the first of January. So why put that pressure on yourself? 

I think changing things because you want to, and not because you feel pressured into it is good and important. Change can be scary, but it doesn't always have to be, if you start with the small steps. Every journey starting with a single step, and all that jazz. One thing that I've been trying to come to terms with myself is that you can't control everything all the time. Trying to do that is like trying to keep sand in a sieve. You just can't. You've just got to do the best that you can. 

Failure isn't a great thing to think about as you try and make positive changes. But you know what? You might fail. Nobody's perfect. I know I'm not! I fail at things all the time - and I don't like it. That's normal, right? But the nitty gritty of it is that I think you're only a 'failure' if you tell yourself you're one, and you don't try again. It's not about how many times you fall, but how you pick yourself up again, I believe is the saying. 

Picking yourself up again isn't always easier, either. Especially when you're trying the best that you can and things still go wrong. It's disheartening. It's disappointing. But the great thing is that we can try it again if we get things wrong. We can start over. If you think of every day as being New Year, then to throw another saying out there, 'tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life'. And that's every single day.