Why Your Only New Years Resolution Should Be to Honor Your Humanity

I have always been a self-proclaimed certified professional goal-setter, planner, organizer, and lover of all things color-coded.

Since I was introduced to my first planner in 3rd grade, I became obsessed and never looked back. I used to put my planner on my desk right underneath my pencil case filled with multi-colored gel pens and eagerly await the assigned homework from my teacher so that I had something to write in my planner—a different color for each subject. The thrill I experienced from checking off each assignment upon completion is one I still experience today when I check off various goals and tasks I can finally say I accomplished. To this day, my favorite time of the year is setting up my new planner so that I can envision myself being the most put-together, accomplished, and productive version of myself than ever before. 

And that last sentence is exactly the problem.

That last sentence is exactly what we have been conditioned to glorify and tie our worthiness to in this society. 

That last sentence is why we don’t feel like we are enough just as we are—just as humans being and humans existing rather than humans doing.

Because let’s be real. It is those who seem like the most productive, “successful,” booked and busy humans who receive the admiration, the accolades, and the automatic worth in our society. They are the ones, we are taught, who exude what it looks like to be a “productive member of society.” They are the ones who have unlocked the key to success, or what achievement looks like, and the rest of us need to get in line and follow suit so that we can feel as important and accomplished as they seem to be. So we fill our Amazon carts with books like Atomic Habits, we sign up for the latest 90-day challenges, we create vision boards and write down our manifestations. We listen to every single influencer, motivational speaker, and self-proclaimed coach telling us how we need to perform better in whatever aspect of our lives we have been taught to be unsatisfied with. 

Are you a parent? Well here’s everything you’re doing wrong that you must fix immediately.
A business owner? Well if you didn’t make 6-figures in your business this year then you’ve failed.
Work in corporate? Where is your side-hustle? Your promotion? Your bonus?
Have a home? It’s not decorated enough. It’s not clean enough. Organized enough.
Have a body? It’s not snatched enough.
Have skin? It’s not glassy enough.
Have clothes? They’re not trendy enough. 
Have a degree? You need another one. Or you need to buy this course or join this program.
Wake up at 6a? Why aren’t you up by 5?

You get the picture. This is nothing new. The metrics of “success” may change with the years, but the chase for that success and the way we tie that success to our worth as a human has been the same since the conception of our modern society. I wrote an entire book on this concept so I’ll link that here rather than re-write the book in this article.

Now, I’m not saying that having goals, aspirations, and even a to-do list is destroying your self-worth and that we must get rid of it all. That would be ridiculous and a little extreme. I live by a good to-do list, otherwise, I would not remember whether I’m coming or going on a daily basis. The problem lies with our culture. Its historic roots in white supremacy created our modern-day human hierarchical culture that measures your worth based on your race, gender identity, class, ability, and participation in capitalism. This culture takes one look at your humanity and demonizes you for it. 

Yet, it is our humanity that makes that society-forced 5a wake-up call nearly impossible because our bodies demand more rest. It is our humanity that produces blemished skin and bodies that bend, fold, and take on shapes that are the opposite of being “snatched.” It is our human need for rest, stillness, community, and joy that causes 60-hour work weeks and side hustles to lead to burnout, dissatisfaction, and discontentment even when we achieve that so-called income or job status that we believed would solve all of our problems. It is our human limitations that prevent us from being able to “succeed” at being the craft mom, the room mom, the neat mom, the baking mom, the gourmet chef mom, and the homeschool mom at the same time. It is our humanity that wants us to eat cookies and delicious meals without feeling guilty for doing so. 

It is our humanity that forces us to stop performing as if we are robots by shutting our bodies down with exhaustion, illness, and dis-ease after we spend years disrespecting their needs and shaming them for being the humans they are. 

When are we going to learn that it is not natural to our humanity to be in a constant state of performance, production, and chasing something that is completely against our design as humans? And when we are going to stop allowing society to shame us for being unable to do so? When are we going to stop believing that the beautiful complexities of our humanity are somehow making us unworthy? We are humans. It is our humanity that makes us worthy, not our ability to go against our humanity and achieve whatever unattainable robotic standard that is trending right now.

I’m not here to discourage you from setting intentions and goals for the new year (or whenever you want to set your goals because there is nothing magical about January 1st.) Like I said, I still enjoy setting some good goals and setting up my planner for the new year. I still enjoy color coding my life and checking both tasks and intentions off of my list. I have intentions to focus on growth and healing. I have intentions for the impact that I hope to make in my work. I have intentions for improvements in my parenting, my marriage, and my tennis game. The difference is that I am setting intentions that honor, prioritize, and center my humanity rather than work against it and wonder why nothing is working. 

And I invite you to do the same. When you center your humanity, your intentions and goals are no longer attached to your worth. Your intentions and goals become an expression of the worth you already know you possess and a way to honor that worth. Rather than create plans and challenges that are nearly impossible to keep up with because your humanity prevents that, you set meaningful intentions that work with your body’s natural rhythms, trusting the messages your body is communicating with you, ensuring that your human needs are met before anything else. You understand that your worth and success are not contingent upon the deprivation of yourself, but rather the fullness of yourself. You let go of any shame society is trying to impose on you for resting in stillness rather than doing more to prove something. You let your skin fold and your belly roll. You move your body for the sake of joy rather than chasing vanity metrics. You rest in knowing you are doing the absolute best that human-you can do and that will look different every hour of every day. And you allow your humanity to just be, exist, and flow with the little moments of life that are truly your most extraordinary ones.

This is the year (and every year thereafter) where your only intention is to honor, center, and celebrate the human that is you.