1. You’ve been gentle and understanding with yourself about your failures this year.

2. …While still managing to take responsibility for your actions instead of looking around for someone else to blame your failures on.

3. You’ve actually sat down and written, on paper, what your 2018 resolutions are.

4. And your resolutions aren’t lofty or abstract ideas – they are all specific things that you could actually measure out and either accomplish or not accomplish.

5. You’ve started narrowing your friendship circle down to just the people who actually act like good friends.

6. You’ve started looking for ways to add more growth and learning back into your life – classes, books, seminars, trips, therapy, informative documentaries, and anything else that you think will help you continue working towards a more healthy and cognizant mindset.

7. And not only have you started looking for ways towards growth, you’re actually following through by signing up for things and taking action instead of just talking about it.

8. You have surrounded yourself with good people who stuck by you and supported you and encouraged you, even if you didn’t have the amount of success that you expected to have this year.

9. You’re working towards a healthier relationship with your own emotions, and figuring out what to do when you’re angry or frustrated or disappointed or sad, and how to manage and work through those feelings in a productive way.

10. You aren’t looking for easy and short-term solutions to problems you experienced this past year. Instead, you are starting to look for the longer and more complicated and more difficult solutions that you know will be longer-lasting and much more effective and good for you.

11. You’re asking for help from people you trust.

12. You’re figuring out how to swallow your pride and just try things, even if it’s not guaranteed that you’ll find success.

13. You’re making decisions for you now, instead of making decisions based on what other people will think of you.

14. You’re making an active effort to spend less time on social media and more time reading books and articles and essays that you think you could learn something from.

15. You feel hopeful and energized even though you still feel intimidated and scared.

16. You’re tired at the end of each day, but in an invigorated way. In a way where you know that you put 100% of your effort into your day and you did good work and you tried to be a little better than you were yesterday.