There are people all over the Internet who are trying to tell you the one true way to achieve your fitness or well-being goals.
They may have some valuable information for you, but there is no such thing as the one true way.
Different things work for different people, and there are so many factors involved that it is not even remotely possible that this random person has your well-being all figured out.
You are the one who knows you best.
You are the boss of you.
You get to decide which practices make sense for you and for your life.
And if what you are doing is working for you and moving you in the direction you want to go then stick with it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the latest trend or if you’re addressing all the micro elements that someone has identified as essential to fitness.
What matters is if it is beneficial for you, you are able to do it, and it is getting you where you want to go.
The practice that you will do is way better than any perfect practice someone else’s outlined.
You know yourself, your schedule, your capacity and abilities, and your inclinations better than any influencer on Instagram or YouTube.
So you don’t need to feel weird about not jumping on a bandwagon, about not following the latest trend, about not pushing yourself in the way that someone who doesn’t even know you is insisting that you should.
A lot of these influencers use heavy duty pressure tactics to convince you that there’s something wrong with you and if you don’t want to follow their program, there will be no way to fix it.
But not wanting to follow someone who makes you feel bad, someone will benefit from you feeling bad, that is not wimping out, it is not a lack of commitment, and it is not an unwillingness to work hard.
Choosing not to follow their guidelines or their program is actually about you trusting yourself. It’s about you trusting your knowledge and it’s about you understanding your own body.
Don’t buy into their hype.
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t seek out advice or that you can’t look for interesting online programs to follow.
I just want to remind you that, as your own boss, you get to decide what will work for you, for your body, and for your well-being.
Please be kind to yourself out there.
And, of course, here is your gold star for today.
Today we are celebrating your efforts to move towards the life that you want
Those efforts may be big, they may be small, they may be visible, or they may involve making the decision to trust yourself and your practises and letting your skills and abilities develop.
No matter what work you put in today or any day, your efforts matter
You matter.
Go Team Us!
This star strongly approves of you doing things your own way. Image description: a large metallic gold star with big eyes and a happy smile against a background of different coloured dots. The dots are lined up diagonally across the page. They start with pink and then they’re a few rows of orange and then yellow and then green. The star is outlined in black and has three black freckles on each cheek.
Here we are at Day 10 of 2026 and I think this is a perfect time for a celebration!
I know, I know, you are probably thinking that you haven’t done much so far, or maybe that you haven’t started, or maybe you haven’t even made a plan yet.
Good news:
THAT ALL COUNTS!
No matter where you are in the process of moving towards the life you want to be living, it’s time to celebrate the fact that you have figured some stuff out!
If you have made 10 days of steady progress – that’s great! You have figured out a system that works for you right now. Go you!
If you have some vague ideas but you haven’t actually gotten started – that’s great! You have figured out that you need a bit more time to get things going. Go you!
If you have tried a few things but they haven’t worked OR if you have a plan but you have only been able to follow it here and there – that’s great! You have either figured out some things that don’t work or you have figured out part of your plan. Go you!
If you don’t have a plan and you don’t even want to think about it – that’s great! You have figured out that now is not the right time for you to make plans. Go you!
If you have decided that you are perfectly happy with your systems and you don’t want to change anything – that’s great! You have figured out that you are pretty content and you aren’t going to be pressured into feeling otherwise. Go you!
When it comes to your plans, your ideas, your practices, and your day-to-day life, please don’t wait for HUGE things to celebrate.
Instead, please choose to celebrate every time you figure something out, every time you make a decision that gives you peace of mind, every time you put in some effort -big or small- that will help you move towards the live you want.
You can always choose a small celebration – a gold star, a relaxing cup of hot chocolate, an extra episode of a favourite show, some time with a good friend- for the small stuff and then scale upwards for your bigger milestones.
The most important thing is that you notice the effort you are putting on a regular basis so you don’t take your work for granted.
Your efforts matter and so do you.
Please celebrate accordingly.
Today, I am celebrating your efforts with this collection of 10 gold stars and 29 gold circles (one of them is kind of off the edge of the page in the photo – oops!)
I am so proud of you!
Keep being kind to yourself out there!
And, of course…
GO TEAM US!
Today’s topic seemed like it needed a lot of gold stars to celebrate it so here’s 10 of them. Image description: 10 gold stars of various sizes interspersed with gold polkadots. Both the dots and the stars are outlined in black as is the edge of the drawing. There are thin black lines in the background behind all the stars and dots.
During each series of Go Team posts, I have a few days when I don’t really feel like writing.
Either I feel meh about the task or meh about my topic and it just feels like it will take forever and not be very interesting to the writer or the reader.*
In case you haven’t pieced it together, today is one of those days.
But because I’ve had these days before I know what to do.
I let my writing routine carry me.
I draw my star – which is always fun for me.
Then I give the post a title and add the categories and the tags
And then I start writing stuff.
Now, I say “stuff” instead of “start writing the post” because the first 10 sentences are just going to be stuff.
The whole point of those first 10 sentences or so is to help me get started, to get me into writing mode.
Occasionally, there’s something salvageable in there, but mostly I just delete them after I figure out what I want to say.
I have learned, with practice, that I can trust my routine for writing these posts. And, in fact, I use a similar routine for any writing that I find challenging to start.
So what does this have to do with your fitness or well-being routines?
If you feel meh about your practice on any given day, you can go through the motions, you can trust your routine, and those actions will carry you through.
Now to be clear I’m not talking about when you have a more complicated obstacle between you and your practice. So this doesn’t apply if you are sick, injured, having a lot of trouble, or having a recurring issue with your planned routine. Those challenges require different solutions and a lot of self kindness.
My suggestion today is for when you just feel meh about your activities.
So if you feel meh about meditating, maybe you drag out a cushion and a blanket and put on some restful music and see if it becomes a little easier to meditate.
If you feel meh about your exercise routine, maybe you can put on your gear and just start moving slowly with no specific plan.
If you feel meh about yoga, maybe you can lie on your mat for a while.
If you feel meh about journaling, maybe you could take out your notebook and pen and put them on the table.
Now, maybe it will turn out that you still can’t get yourself to do the thing. That might tell you that you need to look at your systems, that you need more rest or maybe that your plan for today was a little too ambitious.
I’ll bet, though, that if you let your routine carry you then most of the time you’ll just go ahead and do the thing anyway. Some days, you just need a longer on-ramp.
You will notice that the routines I’ve described here are not elaborate. They are just the few steps that come before you do the thing.
If you like routines, you may also want to spend some time figuring out more elaborate ones for future practices (as long as that will help you instead of making you feel like you have to do a bunch of things before you start your practice.)
But it’s also OK to keep things really simple and just have a few necessary, preliminary tasks that will lead you into your practice.
So, Team, my routine has carried me almost to the end of this post, and I hope your routines will work just as well for you today or whenever the next meh feeling pops up.
You don’t have to be totally enthusiastic and all-in every single time you go to do your practice.
It’s OK to keep strolling towards it until it feels possible to do.
And here’s our gold star to celebrate our efforts today.
Whether you are approaching your practices with enthusiasm or utter meh-ness, whether you are working on a small or large scale, and no matter what your tasks are, your efforts matter.
And so do you.
Be kind to yourself out there!.
💚
Go Team Us!
* If this seems familiar, well I have definitely written about this in previous years. Maybe I’ve even written about it every year. And I feel a bit self-conscious about that, like I’m being too repetitive, but, as always, then I tell myself that if I need the reminder, maybe you do too..
Note: I know that I have definitely written about this before but since I need to keep reminding myself, I’m assuming you may need the reminder too.
Those small ways may include things that will make the task more straightforward, things that will make your body or brain be more comfortable with the task, or things that feel like good rewards for the effort of switching from whatever you are doing at starting the task.
For example, as I’m experimenting with journalling more often, I have decided to keep a notebook on the main floor of my house and up in my room, both of which count as my journal.
Sure, the idea of having one big journal with everything in it is great but I also know myself. If I just have one notebook, there will be times when the fact that my journal is upstairs or downstairs will be enough friction to prevent me from journalling in that moment.
And maybe it’s a bit silly to have two notebooks on the go, particularly when it’s only one flight of stairs between them. But by giving myself the freedom to have two notebooks for journaling, I’ve doubled my chances of actually journalling. Now, any time it occurs to me to write, I’ll have a notebook nearby.
But perhaps journalling isn’t your thing for this year, maybe you are exercising or doing yoga or meditating, instead.
No matter what you are trying to add to your life, it’s worth thinking about the friction that you experience in the process.
What will make your practice more straightforward, more comfortable, more accessible, or more you- friendly?
For example, if you have a nice cushion for meditating in your living room but you find yourself reluctant to meditate because you find it chilly sitting there for a long period of time. Can you put a comfortable blanket or a fluffy sweater next to your meditation cushion?
If you are trying to drink more water, can you fill up multiple glasses of water at the beginning of the day and keep them in the fridge or have several water bottles at different spots in the house?
If you find it unpleasant being barefoot for yoga, do you have a pair of shoes that let you move enough to do the asanas? You can always develop a habit for barefoot yoga over time.
Sure, yoga with shoes on is not quite the same and it’s not perfect, but it’s getting where you want to go.
Do you need to find a specific spot for your exercise clothes?
Do you need to move your weights to a different room?
Do you need a specific playlist to get yourself going in the morning?
It is totally OK to give yourself the things you need to establish and continue your practice even if those things feel a bit foolish or if you feel like you are being a bit ‘lazy’ about it. (Ugh. See my note** about the word lazy below.)
So, if you need to buy a package of gold star stickers to put one on the calendar every time you exercise, then buy a package of gold star stickers and start getting them on that calendar.
If you need to have three towels nearby so you can keep sweat at a manageable level, keep three towels nearby.
If you need to wear a woolen hat to feel comfy while you meditate, wear a hat.
If you want to put bells on your shoelaces so you jingle while you walk, then break out the bells.
Basically, anything you can afford*** to do to encourage yourself, to reduce friction, or to smooth the path is totally worth doing.
Making change is hard enough without imposing extra limits on ourselves.
If something will help you get where you want to go and it doesn’t hurt anyone else then there’s no reason not to do it.
And if people get all judgey about it, that’s their problem.
So Team, whether you are shaping your environment to make your well-being practices more straightforward, or you have everything worked out and you’re forging ahead, or you’re still making your way through your day in baby steps, I celebrate those efforts.
No matter how big, how small, or how intense they are, your efforts matter and so do you.
Go Team Us!
Here’s your gold star for the day. Please be kind to yourself out there.
Today’s gold star is growing like a flower. Image description: a drawing of a metallic gold star on a stem that is growing out of the ground and that has a leaf on each side of it. The star is outlined in black and the stem and leaves are filled in with tiny circles outlined in black. The ground is represented by a wavy black line that is about 1/5 of the way up the page and that bottom fifth of the page is decorated with short black lines that alternate horizontally and vertically to form a woven effect.
*The way I am using ‘smooth the path’ here is not exactly the way the Heath brothers use it in their book but the basic principles are close enough. I think so, at least!
**I think the word lazy is as much of a jerk as the word should. People wield those words like weapons and there is absolutely no call for it. Increasing your chances for success by smoothing the path to your practice is just a smart way to proceed. People can keep their petty judgements to themselves while you forge ahead to the life you want.
***I don’t just mean financially. You also have to decide how much time and energy you can spend on reducing friction and smoothing the path. And if your exact solution is out of range, perhaps there is a different approach that will create the same effect.
One of the things I love about Yoga With Adriene is how often she returns to the idea of ‘Find What Feels Good’ when it comes to a yoga practice.*
I think it is a great guideline for many practices but particularly for movement practices because so many fitness instructors and influences are all about what looks good or about burning calories or about crushing one thing or another.
I feel decidedly meh about all of those things but I feel GREAT about leaning into ways to feel good about the practices I am bringing into my life.
And I am hoping that as you work towards expanding your life in whichever ways you choose, your feelings will be a key factor in your decision-making process.
It is worth figuring out how to make your practices feel good to you.
In fact, “How do I want to feel?” can be one of the most important starting points in any project** because it gives you some criteria for choosing activities, timelines, conspirators, and actions.
Once you know how you want to feel, you can identify what actions to take, how and when to take them, and who to take them with.
And considering how you want to feel gives you a bit of extra motivation, an extra sense of why you are choosing to do what you are doing.
When it comes to fitness and wellness, your feelings aren’t just about feeling good, bad, excited, or whatever, they can also get specific to the practices you are considering.
You can ask yourself “How do I want my legs to feel?” or “What does strong feel like?” or “How does ‘feeling energetic’ show up in my body?” And then you can decide how to work towards those feelings/how to track them/how to motivate yourself in the search for them.
And, of course, my ADHD brain won’t let me get away without considering this possible hitch:
Sometimes, the thing that will feel good in the long term doesn’t feel good now.
For example, the feeling of having strong abs will be great in many ways but doing plank right now may not feel good at all.
In fact, the effort required may feel downright discouraging.
And I am not going to suggest that you put a lot of energy into convincing yourself that something you don’t enjoy feels good (but if that works for you, have at it!)
Instead, I am going to suggest that you find something that feels good about it – maybe you can focus on how good it feels to check that exercise off of your list, or how good it feels to see the number on your timer creep up, or, even, how good it feels to stop!
And you might spend a bit of time digging deep into your imagination to generate a sense of how it will feel to have strong abs, the things that will be easier for you to do, the way your body will respond to future challenges as a result. Perhaps knowing you are giving a gift to your future self will help your sacrifice feel good in the moment.
I have a lot more to say this topic but I don’t have a lot of time to say today so I am going to pause the discussion here and get to the gold star portion of our post:
Here are your three small gold stars for your efforts today. You can award them to yourself for three separate things or you can pile them all in for one thing.
I know you are working on things, whether you are at the thinking stage, the planning stage or the action stage.
And I know your capacity will vary from day to day.
Please celebrate whatever the you of today is able to do, no matter how small, because your effort counts and your work matters.
Be kind to yourself out there!
Go Team Us!
A drawing of three small gold stars hanging from strings at the top of the notebook. In the bottom right corner and the top left corner there are a series of curved black lines that alternate between being filled with a gold stripe and featuring a line of black dots. The background of the whole image features a bunch of small black dots.
*In fact, Find What Feels Good is the name of her app.
**In many other contexts – relationships, presentations, web design, displays, “How do I want them to feel?” can also be an important question but it is less relevant for your fitness and wellness, of course!
A new year often brings a sense of renewal. I’m not one to make resolutions in January. It is a good time to check in on goals and make adjustments. Steady as she goes!
I’m stacking the deck in my favour for a good 2026 by ensuring each day has movement in it. Daily dog walks, cycling commutes, strength and flexibility. I’m set up for success and have fully ditched “all or nothing” thinking.
Resilience
I’m bracing for bad stuff too. Experience has taught me along with all the great things comes a healthy dose of hard stuff, horrors even.
It’s the complicated gift of middle age, being pulled in many directions without falling apart.
Going through tough stuff has taught me I’m a good hugger. Olympic level hug giver right here. Happy to demonstrate at any moment.
I hold hands at hospital bedsides very well. I stay careful and kind now, even when I’m really upset.
I’m more resilient thanks to my fitness adventures.
So my wisdom to share on this year’s fitness goals is here for you if you need it.
It all counts
Watch didn’t record? Garmin dump your ride? It’s ok if it didn’t end up on Strava. Your body knows you did it. Data is only one measure. You were there. You did it. Go you!
Say it again, it all counts
Barely got to the workout? Had to wrap up early? Needed to lighten the resistance? Take a lighter weight?
AMAZING! You showed up for yourself and invested in your wellbeing. Well done!
You don’t have to like it
There will be days it sucks and you don’t enjoy the workout. You will always feel a sense of accomplishment regardless of how it went.
If a given activity is really chapping your ass switch it up. Ditch the weights and do a cardio dance class. Yoga pissing you off? Take up a martial art. You don’t always have to like it. Way to go!
Confidence comes from trusting yourself
You know when you are sick and need to rest.
You know when you need down time.
You know when you need help staying motivated.
You know who to go to for help.
You know a lot!
Trust yourself!
Plans rarely survive encounters with reality
The beautiful plan will fall apart. That’s ok because you knew it would happen and made flexibility part of the plan. Please, please, please break up with perfection.
My MVP (minimum viable plan) is 60 minutes of movement. Walking, cycling, stretching, dancing in my underwear. It’s adaptable.
Weather is sweet? I’m on my bike.
Back getting tight? Add another walk and do some yoga.
Bike out of commission? Grab some dumbbells.
You get the idea.
Messy is good
Challenge yourself to be a bit of a wreck. Not all moments are instagram moments.
Exploring the edges of your capacity is exciting and helps you grow. It’s not necessary every day but totally required to keep monotony at bay.
Team up to survive
It’s a fitness wasteland out here. Team up in person or virtually with workout partners. You will get more workouts in more often. Harness the power of positive peer pressure.
HAVE FUN
I’m serious. Play disc golf, beach volleyball, snorkel with manatees, whatever makes this year different than last year. Be silly and do stuff. That’s part of fitness too.
That’s it
Thank you for reading this far. I hope you gleaned some gems that you can keep for 2026.
Spoiler, this is the advice I need so I wrote it down. Hopefully I don’t forget!
LETS GO 2026!
Nat is cozy in winter clothes. Michel, forever photographed just behind her and off to the side is looking lovely. They are in front of a brick house with lots of snow on the ground.
Welcome to 2026! Look at you, rocking this new year already!
As you probably know, every January I post daily encouragement posts to help all of us (including me!) find our footing in the new year.
These posts aren’t just cheering you on (but I do a fair bit of that!), they are intended as gentle reminders that it is ok to find things challenging and that doing things in your own time and your own speed is a great way to approach new ideas.
And to get us started, here are three important ideas that will be woven through this month of posts:
1) You’re good. Just as you are. You don’t need to be fixed.
I get really squicked out by the whole ‘New Year. New You!’ and ‘Improve Yourself!’ and ‘Become A New Person’ vibe that permeates this time of year.
I know that most people probably don’t take it as literally as I do (Neurodivergent? Me? Whatever do you mean?) but, to me, it feels like those messages are telling people that they aren’t enough, that there is something wrong with them, that they need to be ‘better.’
I don’t love that for us.
So, instead, I would like you to know that you are GREAT as you are.
Sure, there are things in your life, in your approach, or in your day-to-day that are frustrating, tiring, or unsatisfying, and you may want to shift those things to make your life smoother, more fun, or more interesting but those things aren’t YOU.
There is NOTHING wrong with YOU.
You can expand your life and your routines and your capacity in any way you choose.
If those expansions help you feel good or help you feel more satisfied, forge ahead.
But please, please, please, don’t feel that you NEED to do these things to be good enough.
You are already good enough. You are, in fact, great and anything else you do is just adding to your magnificence.*
2) The daily gold stars are for everyone. You have nothing to prove.
You can approach the new year in whatever way works for you and I will award you gold stars for your efforts.
(Yes, I know that many people only expect gold stars for results but my ADHD and I do not approve of that. We have little or no control over our results, and results take a long time. Our efforts though? We have control over those and they are happening right now. So I like to award gold stars for our efforts – big and small – so we can feel encouraged to keep moving towards the things we want for ourselves.)
If you find the ‘clean slate’ feeling encouraging and helpful, then go right ahead with your goals and plans and activities. Gold stars for you!
If you find all of that a bit overwhelming and you want to move slowly into the new year, the meander along at your own pace. Gold stars for you!
If you are just carrying on with what already works? Gold stars for you!
If you are waiting to figure things out? Gold stars for you!
Gold stars are for effort of any size or shape.
Even the teeniest effort counts AND your effort doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.
3) You don’t have to have everything figured out to get started.
I know, some people have their plans for the year all set out and they are ready to dive right in on their schedule right away.
Others have just a vague idea of some things they might want to do this year but the details are sketchy at best. **
And many of us fall somewhere in between those two.
But here’s the thing, you can move towards the future you want either way.
If you have a plan, do the next step in your plan.
If you are just working from a vague idea, then you can do anything and it will help you wrap your mind around your goal.
For example, if you want to get stronger but you don’t know exactly what that means for you yet, then do one leg lift or one arm circle. Sure, it won’t make you instantly stronger but it is a step in that direction and it gives you a little bit of momentum.
Or if you want to have a meditation practice, you can take one long, slow, breath and focus carefully while you do. It won’t give you instant inner peace but it’s not going to do you any harm and it will probably feel pretty good. And, again, you’ll have done SOMETHING that moves you closer to where you want to go.
And really, even the most detailed plan is just doing the same thing – it’s ok to figure things out day by day.
So, Team, there are three key elements to get you started and here is your first gold star.
Please remember that you get a gold star for your efforts no matter what those efforts look like today.
You may have jumped out of bed for a workout, you may have decided to spend a little extra time breathing slowly over your tea this morning, or you may do anything in between or beyond – any of those efforts are about taking good care of yourself and they earn you this gold star.
Go Team Us!
Please be kind to yourself out there.
*For any readers (like me) who have to immediately react to comments like this with a “You don’t know who is reading this! They may not be great!” or with a bunch of thoughts about why this doesn’t apply to them, consider these two things
1) Great doesn’t mean perfect. When I say that my readers are great, I mean that they have lots of great things about them and that they are fundamentally good people doing the best they can with the resources they have. I firmly believe that most people are pretty damn great but they just don’t realize it.
2)If you think that my comment about *YOU* being great doesn’t really apply then maybe you can consider the possibility that it *might* apply instead of trying to tell yourself that it is a fact. Maybe approach it like this: “What if Christine was right and I am doing better than I realize? How would I do things differently if that was the case?”
Sometimes, especially when I am busy, I forget to simplify.
I’ll end up following an old plan, doing something in a complicated way, or making a task much bigger than it needs to be, just because it doesn’t feel like I have time to think it through and/or make new decisions about it.
This can result in me doing a lot of unnecessary work or being needlessly stressed and it definitely reduces the possibilities for enjoying the process.
So, for a while now, when things feel complicated, I have been going back to one quick reminder:
Do the easy thing!
And, sure, that could be interpreted in multiple ways but in this case it means to find the easiest way to accomplish what I am setting out to do and only add extra things if I know I will have time and energy.
So, for example, if I was hosting a dinner for a group of people, I might initially have the idea that I was going to cook a bunch of stuff.
But if that starts to feel too stressful, I would look for the easiest way to accomplish my task (which, in this case is finding a way to enjoy hanging out and feeding with those people – it’s not usually about the specific food.)
That might mean ordering a meal, or buying some precooked items at the grocery store, or making pancakes, or switching to a dessert party, or any other solution that reduces stress and scales the task to a manageable level.
And if I decide that I am making pancakes and then have the time/energy/inclination to make side dishes or dessert, it’s a bonus, not a commitment or an obligation.
So, Team, today I’m inviting you to consider what ‘Do the easy thing!’ might look like for you.
Is there something coming up – a task, a commitment, and event- that you could pare down to a simpler version?
Are you putting pressure on yourself to do something perfectly that you could challenge yourself to make as easy as possible instead?
And, yes, I know that you may get pushback from people who are counting on you to overexert yourself so they can enjoy something stress-free but they can just shut-up. Decide on a response in advance (“This is what I can do this year.” “I know you prefer it the other way but this is how I have to proceed this year.” “If you would like something different, feel free to take this on yourself.”) and stick with it. Try not to make excuses or waffle about it, that gives people the idea that you will give in if they push – just state it as plainly as possible and forge ahead.
You deserve to enjoy your December and to minimize your stress.
You deserve to have more space in your own life.
You deserve kindness, care, and consideration, just the same as everyone else.
And I wish you ease in the process of finding it.
In the spirit of doing the easy thing, here are our practices for today:
My favourite warm-up routine! It’s not fancy but it is pretty easy and I feel great when I’m done.
A five minute warm-up video from Fitness Blender. The still image shows a person with long light brown hair in exercise clothes standing in a white room. They are in the middle of one of the warmup exercises so they are standing on their right foot with the lower part of their left leg lifted up behind them.
And here’s an easy, short, visual mindfulness practice from SunFlow. It’s a YouTube Short so it can’t be embedded but it’s worth following the link and watching on repeat.
The image shows a pink ball moving back and forth through an open-ended spiral against a green background while directions to breathe in or out appear near the spiral. If you are just listening, there is a breath sound to follow – they begin by breathing out.
While I understand that influencers and content creators and marketing people are always looking for something to hook their current campaign on, I find the hype to ‘make the most’ of the rest of 2025 to be both tiresome and tiring.
And judging by these posts, I’m sure that Sam and Catherine feel much the same way.
I’m not tell you how to feel though! If you find yourself fired up and inspired by making the most of the rest of the year – please forge ahead.
However, if you find yourself greeting the whole ‘become unrecognizable’, ‘fall reset’, ‘maximize’ approach with a weary sigh, then I invite you to take a few minutes to consider this:
We all have plans, goals, hopes, and ideas for different time frames in our lives.
Some of them work out well, some we need to adjust, and some we abandon – consciously or by default.
All of those things are perfectly normal, human things to do – they are all part of the greater contexts of our lives and, over time, some of them will matter to us more than others. And that’s totally ok.
But, while our brains tend to default to noticing what we failed to accomplish* and to keep us focused on doing more and doing better – we can also consciously choose to notice what went well, what we have already done, what worked.
We can choose to notice our victories – planned, unplanned, large, and small.
I happen to think that this is a GREAT time of year** to reflect on the things that went right so far in 2025 – the activities and events we enjoyed, the things we accomplished, the stuff we learned – and celebrate them.
And, if we feel like it, we can try to add more of those fun, victorious things into the months ahead.
It’s totally ok to add other unrelated goals, of course, that’s up to you. Just don’t think that you MUST add stuff or that you have to always be pushing yourself to go bigger and get better at everything all the time.
Oh, and while I’m at it – Don’t forget that the whole ‘end of the year’ time frame is actually pretty arbitrary – especially for personal goals – and you can start and finish things at any time that suits you.
So, Team, today and always, I invite you to notice and celebrate your victories, to go easy on yourself for the things that didn’t work out, and to be gentle and kind to yourself throughout the whole process.
Here’s your gold star for your efforts.
Go Team Us!
Image description: a small drawing of a gold star against a background of closed spirals drawn in black ink. The star and the drawing are both framed in black. The drawing is propped upright against a green surface on a white desk.
*While we’re at it, let’s practice going easy on ourselves about all of this stuff. I’m not suggesting that we must only do easy things and I am definitely not suggesting that we avoid challenges- doing hard things, learning, and challenging ourselves helps us to shape our lives in satisfying ways – but we don’t have to be mean to ourselves about things that don’t turn out well. That meanness feels useful, it feels like being realistic and self-disciplined, but if treating ourselves that way created good results, we’d all be superheroes by now.
**Spoiler: It’s ALWAYS a good time to notice and celebrate the good things and plan for more of them!
And I definitely know that you don’t always *feel* terrific.
But neither of those things diminishes your inherent terrificness.
(Is terrificness a word? I vote yes!)
You are always out there doing what you can with the resources you have – even those resources might change from day to day (or hour to hour or minute to minute.)
It’s a hard thing to be a person and while there’s all kinds of talk out there about how important it is to push yourself and to try hard and to strive for perfection, there’s no need to be putting that pressure on yourself all the damn time.
So instead, let’s start with a basic truth – you’re terrific – and then you can add any bits and pieces to that foundational terrificness whenever *you* want (no one else gets to decide the timing on that.)
And, yeah, it’s a tricky thing to remember how terrific we are but here’s a gold star for our efforts to keep our terrificness in mind.
If you aren’t quite up to accepting your terrificness, then the gold star can be for anything you happen to be working on.
Image description: A drawing of a gold star with a background of sets of overlapping concentric circles drawn in black ink.
