Dear Nati

Dear Nati,

It’s time that you and I had a chat. A really honest one. I know how much you love those (along with a heavy dose of sarcasm). So, here goes.

Every year you burden yourself with the weight of your own expectations - especially when it comes to setting your New Year’s resolutions. You set yourself rigid, lofty goals, and tell yourself that you need to do better than you did over the last twelve months. Do you ever take time to praise yourself for everything you **did** achieve? Do you ever pat yourself on the back for the hurdles you jumped over and walked away from in one piece? No.

Well, maybe it’s time to start doing exactly that.

You see, these past eighteen months have been shit. Let’s call a spade a motherfucking spade. Along with a global pandemic, you turned 30 and had an existential crisis engulf you whole - how fun! Possibly the hardest time in your living history was made exponentially more difficult by coinciding with one of the darkest periods of your life: a time when every aspect of your existence was thrown into harsh relief, causing you to re-examine just what the hell you’ve been doing with your life, and if it’s been making you at all happy.

Did this combination of abominable circumstances make you give yourself a break? No, quite the opposite. You berated yourself for everything you had ‘failed’ to achieve. You gave yourself daily dressing-downs and soliloquies on how you just weren’t quite up to par with everyone else. It was exhausting.

You’ve always been a goal-oriented perfectionist, so feeling rudderless in a misty sea storm of masks and missing friends and family has been particularly hard. Feeling like you’ve fallen so short of where you thought you’d be at 30 means that this year, more than most, your urge is to set resolutions so great and grand as to verge on impossible.

That’s why I’m here to talk to you.

May I humbly suggest an alternative to the goal-setting of yore? Not a total absence of resolutions and aims for the New Year, per se, just a redirection of their intentions.

Let’s make 2022 about you.

Can this be the year where looking after yourself and your mental wellbeing are the biggest and greatest goals to reach for? A year when your success is not measured in money, career moves, or comparison, but by how often you take time to take care of yourself, and build up your self-esteem, rather than your followers on Instagram?

It’s a hard ask, I know, when your default is to only value yourself in relation to what you give to others, not what you give to yourself. It’s a difficult pivot when you’ve defined success through the eyes of society, and not your soul. But let’s try.

Every day, I want you to do something nice for yourself, even if it’s small. Make yourself a big cup of coffee, and curl up with a good book by the window. Don’t feel guilty that you’re not ‘achieving’ anything in this time, because you are - you’re looking after yourself. Luxuriate in this moment of peace, and be totally present. Take time to rest without the pressure of doing, creating, earning, or achieving. Breathe deeper and longer. Slow down.

Start filtering out that pestering poison to positivity - your negative inner voice - and start becoming your own best friend. Would ever even **dream** of speaking to her the way you do to yourself? Of tearing her down and never once celebrating her achievements? I thought not. Yet doing it to yourself is okay, huh? See any problem with that logic? It’s time to become your biggest cheerleader, girl. Pick up those pom-poms and start chanting for a win.

With every life decision you make, start asking yourself if it aligns with your highest purpose and happiness. What would you do if you felt that no one would judge you? Who would you be if you didn’t feel the eyes of society bearing down on you? **That** is exactly how you should be living every day of your life, because guess what? No one, not one single person on this earth, is judging you as much as you’ve been judging yourself, so why not do exactly what sets your soul on fire? It might just set you free.

Set boundaries and prioritise your peace like your life depends on it - it does. A lifetime of letting people in and under your skin means that this will be particularly difficult, but perhaps that’ll appeal to your reflex of setting tricky resolutions. Stop taking on everyone’s baggage and leaving no space in the luggage for your mental health. It’s the only way you’ll travel healthily through life.

Finally, don’t dilute yourself for a single second more of your life. Your essence is wild, wacky, and wholly unique, so don’t you dare water yourself down to suit someone else’s palate. As the saying somewhat goes, you might not be their cup of tea, but you’re someone else’s shot of whisky, and I’ve personally always loved the fieriness of liquor on my lips.

Placing your self-care front and centre when it comes to next year’s resolutions might feel strange, selfish even, and dangerously different, but I think after the year and a half we’ve had, different is exactly what the doctor ordered.

I want to see you love yourself with the ardour and compassion you do others, take care of yourself like you would your family and friends, and celebrate your wins like the champion you are. You’re so special, and next year, I want you to resolve to realise it fully and unfalteringly.

I love you, Nati. Happy New Year.

From, You.