“And I wanna talk about that
And for the first time,
what’s past is past”
“Begin Again” - Taylor Swift

It took 178 columns over the last four years, but we’ve finally reached a Taylor Swift song. Fittingly, after the 34-year-old dominated the world in 2023, the first column of 2024 should include a piece of hers!

“Begin Again” was released on Taylor’s fourth album, “Red,” in 2012 as the second single from the album.

The song reached the top of country music charts and even reached No. 7 in the Billboard Hot 100, eventually earning nominations for Best Country Song at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

The song has an easy-going melody line with narrative lyrics that describe a young woman’s first date after a bad relationship. She expects to be taken for granted and mistreated, but she’s pleasantly surprised when her date is a gentleman and even compliments her in unexpected ways.

The final line of the chorus indicates that while the young woman had given up on positive effects of love as she recovered from the toxic relationship, but during the date, “I watched it begin again.”

January 1 is widely revered as a day to “begin again” for people, with one of the common activities on New Year’s Day being to set resolutions for the upcoming year.

In fact, when people consider a lifestyle change, they typically set their “day one” of the change for a Monday, the beginning of a month, or January 1.

This past Monday, we had all three collide - the “perfect” day to start your life-changing goal!

So of course, you started the healthy eating and exercise program that you’ve been putting off, have three books already read toward your goal to read more in 2024, are sticking to your newly-created household budget, and already had the first appointment with your new therapist in your effort to improve your mental health (interestingly, the second-most popular 2024 resolution, according to a Forbes survey)?

Oh, you aren’t?

The alarm clock went flying across the room when it went off at five to tell you to go to the gym, healthy eating has only been achieved if pints of Ben and Jerry’s are also considered “healthy,” the primary reading you’ve been doing is memes on social media, and we’ll just leave the therapy out of it.

Sounds like you’re right on par with how most New Year resolutions go. A multi-year study by the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State noted that only nine percent of Americans who make a resolution complete the resolution.

Within the first week, 23% have quit the resolution, with just short of half “giving up” by the end of January.

Writer Jon Acuff began a Facebook group more than a decade ago alongside the release of his book “Start.”

Something he explains within the book became part of the narrative of the group. On Sept. 1, new resolutions would be “tried” at a moderate level so participants had three months of some taste of success when entering the new year, and he found that among those who self-reported in his Facebook support group, the method allowed for a completion rate of nearly 40% for New Year resolutions.

But, Ben, that’s still less than half of all people succeeding!

Absolutely.

It is four times the average success of the general population, though. So, rather than tying goals to a specific date on the wall, perhaps we need to refocus how we set our goals.

Years of research on goal-setting has put the S.M.A.R.T. method of goal-setting into focus among many who write inspirational, change-your-life books.

SMART is an acronym. We’re going to use a goal of reading more as the example as we go through what each letter represents.

The “S” stands for Specific. A successful goal has a specific target to hit. In reading more, does that mean more magazines? Newspapers (yes, please!)? Comic books?

Getting specific with our goal would be to read more non-fiction books.

The “M” is Measurable. Beyond specificity in goals, how often they are to be achieved in order to meet the over-arching goal is a big driver of success. With our reading goal, that could be a goal to read one non-fiction novel per month.

The “A” is Achievable. This is where a lot of health and fitness goals get off track, as the goal-setter shoots for the stars in goals, even if they’ve been narrowed and measured in the first two letters.

For our reading goal, we can work to read 30 minutes per day on a novel, so, in order to give ourselves grace and allow for days that give more or less freedom to read, the goal can shift to “read three hours per week in order to read one non-fiction novel per month.”

Then “R” gets into the Relevancy of the goal. Why do you want to do this? What do you gain? At this point, you very often get even more specific with your goal in order to meet the goal.

Now, the goal would read something like “read three hours per week in order to finish one non-fiction historical novel per month to learn more about the history of South Dakota.”

Finally, we come to “T” for Time-bound, or simply Time. Is this going to be an everlasting goal, is it going to be just for 2024, or is it even a shorter time frame? Essentially, when do you know the goal has been completed (or not)?

To put that final piece on our goal - “In 2024, I will read three hours per week in order to finish one non-fiction historical novel per month to learn more about the history of South Dakota.”

That’s a long way from “read more,” isn’t it?!

It’s also significantly more focused and allows for better aim when selecting a book at the library!

The final part of goal-setting is to do so with forgiveness in heart. Unless you’re an absolute bicycle prodigy, you had to fall a few times before you figured out how to keep a bike on two wheels as you pedaled. Even more falls were likely part of learning to “pop a wheelie” or hop a curb or all sorts of things that may be second-hand now.

If you have one week where you get one hour total of reading done toward your goal or don’t quite finish a novel in a month, despite getting your reading time done, that’s okay.

Jump back on and accomplish it next week or next month. If you find that one per month or three hours per week is aggressive for your life schedule, adjust. We’re not carving anything into stone here - goals can flex as life happens.

More than anything, if your “perfect starting day” led to a missed goal already and you don’t know when to start your goal, try today.

An oft-quoted, non-attributed line is, “The best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is today.”

You don’t need to wait until Monday or the first of the month or even for Jan. 1, 2025!

You can begin again - right now!

Good luck!