As I dunked a two-week-old Christmas cookie into my coffee on the first day of 2025, my stomach still gurgled with the contents of the overindulgent dinner we’d eaten on New Year’s Eve. Despite the long list of resolutions I’d made for myself, I’d already broken three of them, and it was only noon.

“Wake up early,” I’d told myself. “Exercise each morning,” I’d told myself. “Do intermittent fasting,” I’d told myself. Only hours into the New Year, and I already felt like a failure.

I’d been repeating this dysfunctional pattern every year. Beginning in October, when Halloween festivities lured me into “treating myself” to an entire bag of miniature Almond Joys (full disclosure: I’d buy them knowing kids often turn their noses up at coconut, leaving them all for me). I’d give in to too many Pumpkin Pie Martinis and Cinnamon Spiked Ciders. A bit of self-indulgence would throw my schedule off track, and before I knew it, I’d skipped Boot Camp class and slept in again.

November, with its Sunday football chili-cheese Frito boats, complicated family logistics and gravy-splattered Thanksgiving splurges, would drag me further into the gantlet of holiday excesses.

December presented me with an entire month’s worth of excuses for lowering my health, financial and behavioral standards: Obligatory events to attend, marathon shopping trips to endure, sticks of butter to soften, cards to send, cookie platters to consume, cheese balls to chomp, eggnog to guzzle, puzzle pieces to find, expensive cuts of beef to buy, advent calendars to fill, mail carriers to reward, garbage workers to tip, teachers to treat, bosses to butter up, stockings to stuff, holiday dinners to host, Christmas trees to water and presents to wrap.

By the end of the calendar year, I’d fallen off of the Polar Express into a deep, dark abyss, eventually reaching my lowest level of personal disgust.

Ready -- no, begging -- to get back on track, I’d then draft a list of New Year’s resolutions that seemed realistic in the moment given my desperation, but was so overly ambitious, I was bound to fail. It covered everything from dramatic weight loss and extreme physical fitness, to sleep regulation, buying behavior, procrastination, wrinkle management, stress levels, thinking patterns, attitude tendencies and relationship goals.

And when failure inevitably happened, as it had every year, I’d wallow in shame and remorse wondering how much farther I’d go before my belief in my own ability to change hit its rock bottom.

As I sat in my kitchen on New Year’s Day, I realized that for years, maybe decades, I’d repeated this maladaptive annual cycle as if failure, guilt and self-loathing were my holiday traditions themselves. “What should I do to break the cycle?” I wondered.

Implement self-inflicted punishments? “You’re grounded!” Use reverse psychology? “You should eat the leftover cheeseball, because your paunch needs more jiggle.” Embrace my weaknesses? “Isn’t it wonderful that you spent thirty bucks for another used sweater on eBay?” Give up on resolutions altogether? “Cholesterol levels be damned!”

“There must be a better way to better myself,” I thought. If I am to ever succeed at self-improvement, I knew I needed a different approach. One that was more realistic, encouraging and forgiving.

Rather than demanding that I make sudden, drastic changes in specific areas of my life as I had done for years, I needed to encourage myself to simply … do better.

Whatever form my betterment would take, be it significant or small, I needed to recognize that step toward self-improvement. I would be aware that slipups would happen along the way. I would give myself the grace to be human. I would stop being my own judge, jury and executioner. I would discourage guilt and encourage progress in any form. I would become my own cheerleader, offering pep talks that would inspire me to take pride in all accomplishments both big and small.

Besides, I’d always dreamt of being a cheerleader.

“Blech, this cookie is stale,” I muttered, and threw the remainder into the kitchen trash. “Nice job,” my inner voice praised, and the corner of my mouth turned up into a proud half-smile. “See? You’ve got this.”

Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com