After becoming chronically ill, every one of my New Year’s resolution worked the same way: I’d resolve to change something about my health, work very hard to achieve those goals, and still fail despite all my effort. A few years ago, I gave up on resolutions and instead made an “unresolution.” An unresolution is a commitment to work with myself rather than constantly fighting against my illness and myself.

My first unresolution was for 2013: To recognize that I was doing the best I can. Instead of obsessing about the treatments I should be trying, which medications might work, and what new specialist I should see, I challenged myself to recognize everything that I was already doing. You can see there are a lot of “shoulds” in the previous sentence, so that’s where I started. I worked to notice whenever I was thinking about “shoulds.” Once I identified a “should,” I would stop it spiraling into a flurry of worry with a short mindfulness exercise. Each time my mind would begin to obsess, I brought my attention back to my breath. Over and over and over. It took nearly all year to get the practice firmly in place, but it worked.

For 2014, my unresolution was to recognize my own strength. Chronic illness is an incubator for self-criticism and self-doubt. Society tells us that if we just work harder, we’ll get better. But even expending all of our already limited energy on trying to get better, sometimes we don’t, which can lead us to wonder what we’re doing wrong and why we’re so weak. Like with “shoulds,” I practiced recognizing whenever I criticized myself for falling short. Simply by not criticizing myself, I began to see the many ways in which I was strong and brave.

This year’s resolution is to mindfully experience my life as it unfolds. That’s a borderline resolution, but I still think of it as an unresolution because it is working with what I already have and know how to do. Mindfulness has been a vital component of my last two years of unresolutions. This year, I will continue that practice and develop it further.

If you’re already feeling the weight of your resolutions, why not consider remodeling them into unresolutions? Simply by trying to figure out how to live well with chronic illness, you’re already showing great strength and courage. Maybe 2015 would be a good time to recognize everything you’re already doing for your health and yourself.