When I was home sick as a kid, I watched a show in which the puppeteers used to wave goodbye to the children watching: “Bye-bye, Billy!” “Adios, Alison!” They never once said, “See ya, Stephanie.” I guess at the time, in the ‘70s, my name wasn’t very popular. Thousands of dollars and years of therapy later, I am over it.

That said, I have that same feeling whenever I hear some talk show host speaking passionately about the importance of having goals and milestones that you can check off after having achieved them. The camera always pans to the audience, heads bobbing with understanding and recognition of this essential truth. Once again, I feel like the speaker is not addressing me, or people like me, who need to resolve to aspire to something else: dialing it down a little.

Don’t get me wrong—there’s plenty of room for improvement over here in Stephanieland. I’m a slob, an unpracticed driver and get way too rattled when plans change abruptly. I’ve yet to send out my daughters’ birth announcement (they are now eight) and I can’t tell you how many times a week one of my girls—her hand covering her nose to hide the massive snot explosion—and I scour the playground for a better mom than I, one who remembers to carry tissues.

I could aspire to improve those things, and I suppose I do. Goals are useful and important, and without them we’d all be sitting in a pile of dirty laundry on our sofas.

But I have a twisted history with self-improvement, one that has included an eating disorder and a highly vocal internal critic who is like Jughead in the Archie comics—no matter how much she gets, she’s never satisfied. For a long time, I felt that I was never thin enough, easy-going enough or perky enough, and if I didn’t improve in all those areas, I could add lazy and ineffective to my list of faults. Even though I’ve learned to think differently and go easier on myself, perfectionism is my default. I sometimes have to consciously remind myself to cut myself the same slack I cut others without even thinking about it.

I know too many women who use self-improvement as a bludgeon, and aspirations (which on the surface seem positive) as an excuse to be unkind to themselves. I’d like to see people like me resolve to aspire toward aspiring a little less, or at least a little more gently. At the very least, keep your aspirations attainable, and don’t always move the bar a few inches (a few pounds, a few dollars, a few whatevers) out of your reach.

This year, I’m aspiring to appreciate what I have and what I’m good at (which, happily, is more than things I suck at) even if I don’t always have a tissue when I need one. I’ll leave that for someone else to achieve.

About Stephanie Dolgoff, Best Life contributor

Stephanie went into writing and editing right out of college in 1989 because-true story-she became convinced that it was the only salaried field in which she would not have to wear control top pantyhose to work. And she did not! Later, she realized she could get away with wearing sweatpants if she worked at home. That led to her writing her national bestselling book, My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the Other Side of Young, based on her blog Formerlyhot.com, which came out in 2010. Stephanie is currently a contributing editor at Fitness. Before that, she was a contributing editor at Real Simple, health director and features director at SELF magazine, and prior to that, executive editor and senior contributing editor at Glamour. She has written for O, The Oprah Magazine, Fitness, Health, Parents, Parenting, Redbook, Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Ladies Home Journal, Prevention, American Photo, and many others.

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