Although we are a week away from Christmas, and most of us are consumed with shopping, planning meals, parties, and other such Christmas fare, we are also two weeks from the end of the year.

The start of the new year always brings promise. The promise to start a new diet and lose weight, the promise to go to the gym, the promise to take that class or learn that skill we’ve been procrastinating.

But it’s at this time of year that we also look back and take stock of how far we have (or have not) come. In most cases, an honest assessment brings a reminder that we probably haven’t kept many of the promises that we made to start 2021. Studies show that few new promises or habits last much past the end of January.

We all have reasons (excuses) for why we didn’t accomplish those goals we set a year ago. “Life happens” seems to be a common theme. “I was busy with work” or lately, “the pandemic” seem to be equally popular excuses.

So we set our goals and make promises to ourselves, we usually fail, and at the end of the year we make excuses.

I would bet many of us would cite this cycle as an annual rite of passage. Something we mindlessly do (or perhaps halfheartedly do) as an annual ritual.

Fueling this silliness are all the folks who make money off our wishful thinking. The fitness business lives off of January, hooking people into memberships, training courses, and all kinds of other optimistic possibilities that help fuel peoples’ fantasies.

Of course the self help folks also profit nicely this time of year. Who doesn’t want to be a better person in 2022? What lonely single person doesn’t want 2022 to be the year they are swept off their feet by that special someone with whom they will live happily ever after!

This isn’t a rant about New Year’s resolutions. Deep down I think we all know the reality. I’ve made and broken countless resolutions.

I think I’ve learned to tune out people telling me about their resolutions, and worst, I’ve tuned myself out from my own attempt to start something new.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t try or learn new things. That doesn’t mean we can’t lose weight or get in better shape.

If we’re being honest, humans can be quite amazing when they want to be! Lots of people want to lose weight, and they do. Lots of people want to learn a new skill, switch jobs, or find the love of their life, and they do!

The people who fail are probably the majority, but it’s not fair to only focus on them. There are lots of success stories. There are lots of people who “resolve” to do things at other times of the year besides January 1.

Negativity gets a lot of attention, and attention makes people money .

But there’s no reason we can’t celebrate the good. Why not celebrate the people who make it? Why not celebrate ourselves even when we do fail? At least we tried!

Not much good comes from getting down on ourselves, and none comes from beating ourselves up endlessly.

Failing is human. I recently saw a video produced by SpaceX showing their numerous rocket failures, all of which led to (eventually) successful landings. Big spectacular failures resulted in success, success that would not have been possible without all those failure.

If you are taking time to reflect about the year 2021 was, it’s perfectly fine to note what went wrong, or what didn’t turn out as planned.

But it’s not ok to focus on the bad exclusively. What about the good? What went well? And probably most important, what can you learn from the things that didn’t work out?

Don’t be romanced by the year ending notion that things are always bad if they don’t work out. Why didn’t you go to the gym? Why didn’t you finish that course you started? Why didn’t you learn that new skill that was so important a year ago?

Answer those questions, learn from them, and move on. No need to dwell on the past or ruminate on our failures.

Live, learn, move on.