Overthinking tends to run my brain. I’m anxious, sometimes a little ADD, and the new year for someone who worries can be…a lot. 

The beginning of the year tends to hold the excitement of all the new goals we’ve set for ourselves, and the eagerness of a chance to start all over again at a new beginning. 

For awhile this is great, we’re excited to make this month our chance to finally achieve our goals, but the second we miss our mark and don’t reach them, eat the junk food, miss the workout, drink the coffee instead of the tea or sleep in past our alarms, we’re back to feeling like we lost and maybe this year will be the same as all the rest. Another goal, another dream, down the drain. And we’re back to feeling disappointed in ourselves and figuring out how to get the ball rolling again.

And then, after not realizing our new years resolutions, it becomes so easy for us to imagine the worst. It’s easy to think anxious thoughts like, Will this relationship be the one to make it another year or will it be another break up? Will I finally reach my career goals this year or will it be another year of the same? Will I be able to be as healthy as I want to be this year or will I keep my same unhealthy patterns? What if I fail, grow more apart from my friends, spend another year at a dead-end job, stay too broke to travel and spend another year not going after what I really want?

But one of the best things I’ve ever been challenged to ask myself, as a person who tends to imagine the worst, is if I can flip the script. So, instead of letting the stress of accomplishing every goal on the list, and the inevitable let down of not being able to do all of it get to me, (because hello, I’m not perfect and none of us are) I ask myself-

What if this will be the best year of my life? 

What if, without stressing or dieting or trying to be superwoman, this year ends up being the best year of my entire life all on its own?

Instead, I’ve decided to change things, to change my “what if” into the possibility of my dreams coming to life. What if this year I get married to the love of my life? What if this year I move up in my career and finally get the job I’ve been waiting for, that makes me feel excited to get out of bed in the morning? What if this year I get to leave the country and have some of the best travels I’ve ever had? What if I become even closer to my best friends and make memories that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life? 

I don’t know about you but I think I’m ready to leave behind the unrealistic goals and high pressure mindset that is only going to make me feel less than. I’m ready to open myself up to the universe giving me the very best that it can, the very best things that could give me a life that I couldn’t even dream of yet. A world of possibilities.

Maybe there’s a plan out there in the universe that I just can’t understand yet. Maybe everything I’m dreaming of is on its way, making it to me as fast as it can. Maybe the love our lives that we haven’t met yet, the job oppertunity, the friend we’ve been looking for, are all just around the corner. Maybe our real resolutions should consist of opening ourselves up to the possibility that we might just get everything we ever dreamed of, and that letting go of a goal or a dream that isn’t working could be letting life give us the one that’s truly meant for us. 

Maybe by letting go, this might just be our best year yet.