The New Year is an exciting time that’s chock-full of fresh possibilities and prospects. It’s no wonder that millions of people all over the world set resolutions for themselves as they go into the next year. A new year is a new chapter, waiting to be filled in with new ideas, habits, and goals. It’s an extremely positive time of the year!
Everyone has different resolutions come December, but what do resolutions represent? Isn’t it also simple to set new habits to follow throughout the year? Well, humans enjoy the notion of fresh starts and the feelings of hope they bring about. Resolutions can vary from the easily achievable to longer, more complicated ones.
Some simple resolutions could be promising to drink more water in the next year or smiling more. More complex ones could be to recognize and remove toxic people from your life or promising to take up therapy and resolve any inner struggles. Speaking of, if you need any help in figuring out which resolutions to adopt, reach out to me and book a free discovery session today!
The Issue with New Year’s Resolutions
So far, so good, right? Resolutions seem to be warm and wonderful things with great transformative powers. Here’s where the issue comes in. resolutions are much easier said than done. Every New Year’s Eve, people craft a bunch of different resolutions but come February, they’ve forgotten all about them.
It’s understandable. New habits aren’t made overnight, and human beings need consistency and time to adjust to novelty. So, how do we create New Year’s resolutions that stick throughout the year instead of till January? Well, you’re about to find out! Keep reading to understand how to embrace this New Year with steadfast resolutions.
How to Craft New Year’s Resolutions that Stick
Step #1: Be crystal clear about what you want to accomplish
This is the jumping-off point for the whole discussion. It’s important to know what you want to achieve and make a list of your priorities.
One of the best ways to ascertain your current goals is to work with a life coach. Life coaching is essential for almost any phase of your life, and it’s not just limited to an active emotional struggle. Once you sign up with a life coach, you can open up about your concerns and kick-start your journey towards self-awareness and self-fulfillment.
A good life coach will work closely with you to understand what’s going on in your life. When I take on clients, I reassure them with the knowledge that I will create a customized plan for them to follow so they can accomplish any of their personal goals.
Life coaching will allow you to list down all the things you want to work on, be it self-growth or building self-esteem. You will get a personalized strategy that you can then use to make sure you stick to the resolutions that you will draft. It’s a win-win situation!
If you’re eager to explore your upcoming resolutions, book your first free discovery session with me today. It’s that easy!
Step #2: Look at where you are right now
The way I see it, any sort of growth or progress starts when you can truly accept your current state. A lot of people live in denial about what are deemed to be ‘negative’ aspects such as flaws or insecurities. You have to understand that these are all part of human nature and where there is goodness, there may also be some negative traits.
Just because you have insecurities or flaws, don’t feel like you’re a bad person. You’re not a one-dimensional being, and it’s only when you accept this truth that you will be ready to start working on yourself.
Be open to writing down the things you feel you need to fix, be it a short or long list. You can also discuss these items with me during a free discovery session, and we can work out the feasibility of achieving your goals. You will find a lot of instant inner peace once you get your worries out into the open because you can then start to dispel them.
Step #3: Draft a feasible plan
This is where it all leads. Once you’ve followed the preceding steps, you can get to the good stuff, which is creating a plan that you can work with. This is your final list of New Year’s resolutions and your strategy of how to accomplish them.
This step will be a lot easier if you do it with a life coach. For example, let’s say you want to be healthier and overcome self-sabotage in the next year. When you discuss this with me, we will lay down a series of steps that will teach you to overcome the problem in manageable ways. Self-sabotage is a tricky thing to navigate, so we will begin by determining where the feeling is coming from and what motivations you have.
Then we will continue to write down tiny steps such as countering negative thoughts or reaching out to a friend or family member with clearer communication and therefore keep fighting the issue. You will see that these small steps will eventually lead you to conquer a larger issue, and you will have a sizeable goal to check off from your New Year’s resolutions list.
Bonus Tip: Reach out to your support system
A great way to keep yourself on track is not only to make a promise to yourself but to make it to the people around you too. You can pick a couple of friends or family members and show them the plan you’re working on to achieve your resolutions. Once you do this, you will find a sense of responsibility, and you will feel accountable to someone other than yourself. This can be a very positive and uplifting feeling and the more tasks you check off of your list, the better you will feel.
Schedule Your Free Discovery Session Today!
Other blog posts of interest:
♦ Learning How to Shift Your Perspective
♦ How to Give Yourself Permission to Want More
♦ How to Stop Procrastinating…One Step at A Time
♦ The Secret To Creating A Lasting Morning Workout Routine
♦ 5 Ways Self-Sabotage Is Stopping You From Reaching Your Goals
If you’ve gone through an upsetting time in your life, you’ve probably had people give you lots of advice. Some people might tell you to tackle the problems head-on. Others might have advised you to let go of your worries. But what no one tells you is that the most important way to address whatever is upsetting you it to learn to shift your perspective first!
Do you want to become more self-aware? Do you want to walk on the path to self-discovery and self-fulfillment? If yes, you’re not alone. One of the greatest joys of being human is being able to discover new facets of our personalities and carve out opportunities for improvement. Once you start this journey, you can eventually unlock your full potential and get a sense of self! And the best part is, we can tell you how to get there.
I’ve worked with a lot of clients who say that one of their goals is to achieve work-life balance because they read an article in such and such publication. Yes, they want more time with their family. Yes, they want to work less crazy hours. Yes, they want to have more control over their schedules. However, in our coaching sessions, it quickly becomes apparent that these clients don’t really want work-life balance.
In those glowy wonderful articles, I just mentioned I often see very long lists around the benefits of work-life balance. Those lists haunt my dreams! Clients who want to find a life coach often contact me with these same lists and rattle off want they want me to do for them.
For example, a client who seems to take a lot of sick time may have a lot going on at home. This means they never have a chance to decompress from the stress at work. They go from one stressful environment (home) to another (work) and they are mentally and emotionally drained. The way they attempt to manage their situation is to limit their exposure to work stress by taking sick days and just staying in bed on those days.
“Achieving work-life balance” is a zen pipe dream I believe all of those articles I mentioned earlier promise readers. When a client decides to hire a life coach, they quickly realize that same thing. If all of the moving parts in a client’s life were in sync and their only issues were around the demands from their job, they’d probably find another job.
To put it simply, employers want the most bang for their buck so to speak. Every employer’s goal is to get as much use and work out of employees as possible at the lowest possible cost. No business thinks any differently. That’s just capitalism. To be fair, there are some employers who are far better than others at offering more harmonious, peaceful and collaborative environments for employees to work in. This means the need for work-life balance is seemingly taken into consideration when an employer offers certain health & wellness or alternative work programs.
Please understand, work-life balance as a concept is not negative. However what I’ve found to be true as a professional life coach is that clients put all of their attention on “fixing” the wrong things. What I mean by that is that a client will focus on how to make changes about the time they spend at work and just stop there. They won’t take the plunge to reflect upon their lives as a whole and possibly see that their commitments outside of work may be a major factor in their tiredness, lack of engagement, etc. at work.
Everything will change because of motherhood, and this might not even be something that you notice until your baby is suddenly two years old! The most important thing to remember is that you’ll have a lot of new memories and experiences to appreciate. Becoming a mother is the greatest gift, but this doesn’t make it any easier or any less of a challenge. Managing your stress as a new mom means that you realize that:
In the beginning, you’ll need to allow yourself lots of time to adapt. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with visitors, and feel free to put a two-week ban on anybody but immediate family visiting you and the new baby. As amazing as it is to see everybody’s reaction to your newborn, visitors are exhausting when you’re a new mom – you already have to worry about cleaning, cooking, feeding, diaper changes, laundry, and sleeping…let alone making hot drinks for people and being conversational!! With that in mind, know that managing stress for a new mom means making the decision to limit too much visitation from guests.
Your tribe is the most important thing as a new mom. Build yourself a support network of family and friends that you know you can always rely on. This means for emotional support and helps with the baby. These are the people you can count on to bring you a hot meal or go for a coffee and a chat. The people that love you want to help!