The following blog post was written by Rylie Day.
You hear it every year. Maybe you even say it to yourself. Those New Year’s Resolutions won’t last. Well, here it is February 1st (already!). So, have they? I know that I’m already slacking on my very ambitious set of goals for 2014. That didn’t take very long, did it? When evaluating all the ways I’ve fallen short this month, when listing all those short terms goals for January that I didn’t accomplish, when noting all those ways I was supposed to prepare for the best year possible, but didn’t, my initial reaction was to just give up. What’s the use? I’ve off to a terrible start, anyways. But then I reconsidered. I’m only one twelfth of the way through. I have plenty of time to get back in gear. And so do you. So, instead of fixating on the ways in which you may or may not have failed to completely follow through on your goals so far this year, try to get some of the motivation that you had when you made those goals to begin with.
And who better to look towards for a little encouragement and insight than some of our favorite authors? (Or, if you don’t have the time to read further, just use the above stare from William to get you back on track.)
1. “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” – Harper Lee
2. “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” – Zora Neale Hurston
3. “Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.” – Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)
4. “Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.” – John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
5. “Happiness depends on ourselves.” –Aristotle
6. “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau
7. “Be not afraid of greatness… some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” – William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, or What You Will)
8. “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here’s to the next eleven months!