A story about “good” resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions are an admirable and alluring concept. It seems wise to reflect, reassess, rework, and renew with annual regularity, and to stop for enough conscious contemplation to systematically switch gears. I like the ritual. I like that we come together in our simultaneous ventures towards transformation.

But I struggle with the sideways sentiments that too often steer our aspired self-improvements: Get fit. Abolish debit. Be “happy.” Sneaky shoulds and subtle supposed tos and other bossy societal norms tend to drive our universal understandings of what it takes to be a “good human.” That’s what resolutions are, really: good intentions, molded around silent apologies for all of the ways that we aren’t up to speed.

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You do not have to be good.

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About 90% of us fail to accomplish our resolutions every year. Psychologists and cultural experts have all sorts of explanations for this seemingly deplorable statistic: Our goals are too hazy or unrealistic. We try to adjust too many habits at once. We need more accountability.

But the bigger problem, I think, is our misunderstanding of the way change works.

Metamorphosis is a slow and sloppy process. It only succeeds when we’re willing to invite speed bumps and potholes and reversals and breakdowns into our paths of progress. Its only lasting fuel is that of genuine gut instinct and heartfelt motivation.

Should and supposed to are not sustainable forces for forward motion.

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You do not have to be good.

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But we prefer quick fixes. We want new now and better faster. We want roadmaps to follow and to blame when we get lost. So we let should lead the way.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has topped best-seller lists for months on end — life-changing, in 224 pages. BluePrintCleanse makes somewhere around $100 million in revenue each year, and sales of the cold-pressed juice program will likely skyrocket in these first weeks of January. I can’t browse the internet without encountering a barrage of ads for online courses that promise to help me get rich quick or gain 10,000 email subscribers or double my social media following. And the headline on the latest US Magazine cover reads, “Find Out How Khloe Kardashian Lost 11 Pounds Without Exercising,” alongside other scattered promises to share the “secrets” to sustainable weight loss.

Our commercial economy masquerades as an instruction manual for human transformation and self-actualization. THIS, it shouts, in articles and billboards and sidebar advertisements, IS WHAT YOU NEED TO FEEL GOOD, TO BE GOOD, TO BE BETTER, TO BE BEST. THIS.

It’s not that these “solutions” are all faulty or ineffective. (The book, in particular, is supposed to be powerful.)

It’s just that growth and change and reinvention aren’t as easy as 1-2-3 steps. They’re not as simple as “THIS.”

Being good and feeling good are not necessarily the same process.

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You do not have to be good.

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The slick and speedy model of resolution-style transformation doesn’t come with a guide to bumps in the road, to spinning wheels or flat tires, to accidental reversals. It includes no toolkits for midway breakdowns and no airbags for the kinds of crashes that can almost do us in.

Change is not a straight shot. It is not a smooth ride. And when we expect it to be, we interpret every tiny transitory jolt as a full-powered failure. With each minuscule mistake, guilt steals the front seat.

Guilt gets us nowhere.

Guilt goads us to give up.

Guilt points perpetually towards failure. In fact, guilt argues that we’ve failed before we’ve even finished. Guilt distorts the finish line to something too far-off to reach.

Guilt is why we sputter out somewhere between where we are and where we want to be.

Guilt distracts us from the joy of the moment — from the bliss in the bumps and the growth in the standstills.

And guilt disturbs our wisest drivers for genuine progress at an authentic pace: intuition and heart, with permission — not guilt, not should, not supposed to — as fuel.

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You do not have to be good.

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While guilt only stakes flags in all of the places we’ve done wrong, permission quietly insists that it’s alright — it’s all right. Permission frees up the time and space and flexibility to be anything other than nonstop “good”; to just keep going wherever we’re going, whatever the route, whatever the speed.

Permission is the bright green highway sign that only says, sweetly, YES.

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You do not have to be good.

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You have permission.

You have permission to skip the workout and sleep instead. You have permission to skip the party and work out instead.

You have permission to make pasta for breakfast and a green smoothie for dinner. You have permission to eat the cookie and the croissant, too.

You have permission to guard your free time selfishly.

You have permission to leave your bed unmade and your shirt unironed — or to keep your things fanatically tidy.

You have permission to hate that song that everybody else loves. You have permission to love that song that everybody else hates.

You have permission to indulge. To relax. To rest. To quit. To ask for more. To ask for less.

You have permission to leave your resolutions unresolved.

You have permission to be who you are instead of who you’re supposed to be. To do what you want to do instead of what you should do.

You have permission to pursue what feels good to you.

And when you deny yourself that permission — when you try to force your heart and brain and body into things that they’re not ready to accept — you will only get as far as guilt can take you. You’ll memorize the map for being good, but feeling good will remain a distant detour — so you’ll probably turn around and head back home anyway.

Don’t let guilt drive. Guilt isn’t meant to hold the keys.

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Over the holidays, I unearthed my mother’s copy of New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, which is jam-packed with tear-jerking gems. This poem, which you can hear her recite here, is one of my favorites. I’ve been repeating the first line in my head for days as I make plans and set goals and step gently into 2016.

“Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.