Welcome to this Throwback Thursday post on A Couple Takes On MS, where we repost some of our favorite essays over the past 14 years since we launched our blog. These appear on the last Thursday of each month, and there’s something extra special about this one: It’s our last post for 2021, and we are so pumped for our New Year’s Resolutions! This includes focusing on the benefits of why you need to write out your goals for 2022 in our newest podcast (Episode 22 – If not now, when?). Listen to it on our website or your favorite podcast app, and then read this throwback essay from three years ago where I put a new spin on what motivated me for the new year as inspired by Dr. Aaron Boster.
From January 5, 2019
I was talking with my brother, Steve, the other day as Dan finished his workday.
Beyond the New Year’s Eve party analyses that highlight Steve and my first conversation of each new year, he hit me with something before I even asked him.
He asked me if I had made any New Year’s resolutions, and was excited to tell me all about his.
Wait. What? Steve never brings this up without me asking him about it first. Maybe that was at the top of his list: Beat Jennifer to the resolution topic.
He shared with me his three very specific and realistic goals for 2019. It was great to hear all about them, but then he unintentionally put me on the spot and asked me about my resolutions.
I hadn’t yet made them. Wait. What?
That’s so unlike me.
The thoughts were brewing in my mind for several days before then, but I never actually got around to writing them down. We were busy, Dan had been fighting a cold, and, well, I was struggling to come up with some new nonrecycled self-improvement goals for myself.
Nothing came to my mind, but I left the conversation inspired by the plans Steve has for the next 12 months.
Then, a few hours later, I saw a Tweet from Dr. Aaron Boster (we’ve commented about in previous posts) that changed everything about my “resolutions.” He merely asked, “What is your 2019 #WordOfTheYear?”
Without skipping a beat, I immediately said out loud, “Perseverance.”
Why? Because I don’t have a choice in moving forward.
Dictionary.com defines perseverance as, “continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition”
I just can’t give up. I can’t give up with managing my Multiple Sclerosis. Controlling my weight. Continuing my exercise program. With everything in my life, perseverance is critical.
I will carry this word with me throughout this year. Kind of like the “anchor” we learn to use at WW (the lifestyle program formerly known as Weight Watchers); that one thing we can hold onto to remind us what we’re doing with WW and why we’re doing it.
If I give up, I have so much to lose. And I need to push myself on every level no matter how challenging it seems.
This is why perseverance is my word of the year for 2019.