I’m going to call myself out. This blog post is either going to be the launch of a great passion project, or it’s going to join the millions of dreams and aspirations in the New Year’s Resolutions graveyard. So many people’s goals end up in this graveyard, (*SPOILER* in my head I’m imagining the place in Inside Out where Bing Bong the imaginary friend goes to die) and I’d like to take some time to explore why. Why do people bring their goals out into the light just to shove them back in the darkest corner of their mind a few weeks later? I’m sure we could come up with a million different reasons, but here’s the one I think is the most encompassing. Fear. Fear of failure. Fear of mockery. Fear that it won’t work out as it should, or worse, that it works out exactly how you thought but you’re not as happy as you thought you’d be when you got there. Whether this fear is working in your conscious or subconscious mind, it’s there, and I’d bet my bottom dollar that it lives at the root of most insecurities.

I’m a 22 year old recent college graduate and I have no. Idea. What. I’m. Doing. For a while this scared the crap out of me. And not the cute kind of scared where you get butterflies and let out a nervous giggle and that’s the end of it. No. It was the type of scared where you’re paralyzed because your fear convinces you that any move you make is going to be the wrong one. So you just stand still. I’m the type of person who works very well with a routine, therefore when the reality hit me that I didn’t have a need to go school supplies shopping in August to prepare for the upcoming academic year, my entire world was thrown off its axis.

Not to be dramatic, but there’s no other way I could describe it other than a quarter life crisis. I had no job yet. No agenda. No drive. No passion. I felt horrible about myself so I ate my feelings which immediately made me feel even more horrible. Ya know, your classic downward spiral. So one day I was fed up. I chose one area of myself to hone in on with the hope that the confidence I gained would ripple out into all areas of my life. I decided to get healthier. This is a goal that I’m positive are in millions of people’s New Year’s Resolutions graveyards, including mine. But this time felt different. It was about more than how I looked in a bathing suit or how much attention I would get from a prospective beau. I don’t think I could have put my finger on it at the time, but I had a feeling that this goal could set the tone for how I approach life as an adult. Would I just lie down and sulk because that was the path of least resistance? Or would I get up because deep down I knew I was worth more. I knew I deserved better. So I did better. I started to eat foods that fuel my body in the proper way (which, for the record, also taste delicious). I started setting “impossible” fitness goals just to prove to myself that I could achieve them, and every time I did I gained a little more confidence. Which led to me begging the question, “What else can I achieve?”

And I would like to ask the same of you. In your wildest dreams, what can you achieve? Right now it may not feel like a whole lot. But I sincerely believe that making moves, whether it’s by an inch or a mile or whether it works out good or bad is better than standing still. Six short months ago I was basically convinced that my life could never be extraordinary because I wasn’t strong enough or disciplined enough to achieve my goals. Deciding to prioritize my health taught me, not only that I could achieve my goals, but that I should be reaching higher. That’s why I’ve signed up for a half marathon in May. That’s 13.1 miles. Before this year I couldn’t run more than 1 mile without feeling like I was going to die. Now I can run about 7 miles, and I know by May I’m going to run 13.1. For me that is such a beautiful way to quantify the amount of work I’ve put toward myself. And it wasn’t to punish myself because I “cheated” on my diet and ate a cookie. It was a way to bless my body and practice self love, a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a long time. That is also why I’ve set myself not one New Year’s Resolution, but 12. One for each month of the year. While this would have been incredibly daunting to me this time last year, now it only fills me with excitement to see what achieving all of these things will look like.

So why am I telling you this? This experience has left me struck with the power of our own minds. Your thoughts can either kill you or build you, my friends. And accepting that you have the power to choose which one makes you feel like a kid in a candy store. I’ve only gotten a small taste of this feeling and I already know that everyone deserves to feel that way. Everyone deserves to have their potential be recognized and nurtured. We all need a confidence boost every now and again, and that is what I want to provide. I want to be the friend in your corner when you feel backed against a wall. If this is able to motivate just a single person through a slump of achieving their goal, I view that as a success. I hope that throughout the course of the year my accomplishments can remind you that you are capable of more. I hope that my failures remind you that we are all the same. We all slip up. We all have reservations, doubts, and fears, but it’s in the decision to act in spite of those fears that puts us on a path to be better than we ever believed possible.