For the past few years, it’s become a tradition for me to take a Snapchat selfie on New Year’s Day and caption it with my goals for the upcoming year. On New Year’s Day this year, I got a “1 year ago today” notification about the selfie I had taken on January 1, 2019. I remember smiling to myself because I had accomplished everything I set out to do in 2019. As someone who thrives on checking off to-do lists, that gave me a lot of satisfaction.
However, this year was different. Most of the goals I made were unfinished or were simply not even started at all. Like many other people, a lot of my plans derailed. But in that process of not knowing what to do, I found myself in a limbo that was surprisingly relaxing. I am someone who enjoys being busy and suddenly having no agenda and no plans in general had me feeling confused. But, I wasn’t mad about it as I had expected myself to feel. I ended up taking a lot of time for myself this year to learn new ways of living, being kinder to myself, and redefining things I used to think were all negative.
“What do I do now?” turned from a question that came from a place of genuine confusion to an opportunity for me to completely reshape my year. I had a lot of time to spend on my thoughts and go through everything I experienced this year. Overthinking used to stress me out all the time and made me uncomfortable, but I realized that if overthinking something makes me uncomfortable, my mind is telling me that there’s something to learn from that experience. I saw that sometimes I move too fast through life and let important instances where my gut told me something felt off completely slip from my mind because I didn’t take enough time to go through what happened and how I was treated by others.
Looking forward to 2021, I hope I can take this feeling of optimism with me into the new year and truly establish a habit of being content with not rushing myself all the time. I want to give myself more space to overthink things so I can learn, be a better person, and continue to go through my life with stronger confidence and an ability to go with the flow. On New Year’s Day, 2021, I’ll take a selfie and acknowledge my goals for the year but also leave them open to change as new and unexpected things come my way.