By Charles Jardine
Assistant Editor
Do you ever feel like the goals you set for yourself don’t always turn out like you hope? Well, as the first month of 2024 wraps up, I’m sure most of us are having a small sense of failure for not following through with our New Year’s resolutions.
But it’s ok. It’s still very early in the year, and you have 11 more months to make the changes you want to see.
Despite the ignorant bliss that comes with resolutions, change is hard. It takes time and effort and often isn’t a pretty process.
In the iconic 1995 hit “Toy Story,” Buzz Lightyear claims that he is able to fly. His counterpart Woody the cowboy attempts to put the ego of the new toy down and claim that he is only “falling in style.”
When it comes to resolutions, we often start the new year like a fresh Buzz Lightyear out of the box. We have ambitions and strive to achieve them for the first week if we’re lucky.
Buzz himself didn’t believe most of the things the other toys told him, but, even when he realized that he didn’t have all the abilities his cartoon character had, Buzz pushed on.
In the critical part of the movie, Buzz flies with the help of a firework and lands on a moving truck to save the day.
Despite not being able to fly, Buzz embraces falling in style. It is this same mindset that we need to have when it comes to our resolutions.
My resolution this year is to spend less than two hours a day on my phone.
During my junior year of high school, I worked really hard that Lent to spend less than an hour on my phone every day. Even after that Lent, I only averaged 90 minutes my senior year.
However, that small number slowly increased until I was averaging four and a half hours in 2023.
In order to be more present and not waste my life away, I set the goal of spending less than two hours on my phone a day this year.
Unlike my junior year of high school, things have not gone as swimmingly as before. So far in the month of January I’ve averaged three and a half hours.
It is not less than two, but it is progress. And progress is the beauty of falling in style.
Very few of us could cut our screen time in half, lose 20 pounds or eat healthier over the course of a day, a week or even a month.
Yet most, if not all of us, could accomplish these things over the course of a couple months or the entire year.
I encourage everyone who wants to see change in themselves to help yourself grow and become a better person. Push through and accomplish what you set forth to do this year.
I’ll leave you with one last quote for motivation from the legendary Doc Hudson: “Was that floating like a Cadillac, or stinging like a beaver?”
Because in all honesty the first few months are going to feel a lot more like “stinging like a beaver” than they are “floating like a Cadillac”. But when we push through and put in the hard work, our goals will become realities.