Skip the New Years Resolution this year.

Every year, we spend the last few days trying to come up with a good New Years resolution. Some of them are pretty typical, like losing weight, finishing our honey-do lists, learning a new language. Some of them are more complex, like starting a business, learning to play guitar or letting go of a past failing or trauma.

I’m telling you to skip that this year.

Why do we make resolutions to begin on a “new year”? Why is the slogan “new year, new me!” so popular?

Is there really anything wrong with the old you? Is there really anything that needs changing, or do you just need a perspective shift?

Stop putting so much pressure on yourself to change who you are. Don’t promise yourself you’ll lose weight. Don’t promise yourself that you’ll buy that gym membership or talk to a surgeon about a tummy tuck. Don’t promise to change yourself, as if there’s something really wrong with you.

You are a perfectly imperfect human being. You are not a side, you are a main dish. You’re valuable and beautiful and incredibly important to more people than you could possibly know. You don’t need to change who you are. It’s a lot easier to learn to accept who you are. The weight on a scale and the scars on your skin do not define you.

Learning to love yourself isn’t easy. It isn’t something you can cross of your list and say “Great! I’m all done!” It takes daily work and affirmations. It takes effort and it comes with the knowledge that some days, you won’t achieve that goal. But it’s a lot cheaper than surgery. It’s a lot less painful than stepping on a scale and being disappointed that you don’t see the number you wanted to see. It’s even cheaper than a $20 gym membership.

IF you want to go to the gym this year to be healthier, go for it.

If you want to schedule surgery to feel confident in your skin, do that.

But please, PLEASE don’t make huge life changes because you think you have to.

Don’t make huge life changes because you think that’s what the world wants to see.

Don’t make a New Years resolution because everyone else is and because you think that this is the year you’ll finally achieve something that’ll make you “worth” anything. You’re already worth everything to the right people. Now you just need to show that value to yourself.