Don’t you just love beginnings? Maybe it’s just me, but I love everything that has to do with beginnings.
It’s why I’m a morning person – because I wake up with just a whole day full of possibilities ahead of me.
It’s why I love Mondays – which makes me a little bit crazy and unpopular sometimes. But Mondays start a whole new week full of possibilities.
It’s definitely why I love January – the ultimate fresh start, with possibilities and new beginnings as we turn that calendar to a whole new year and put away any nonsense that took place the year before. And we get to cast a vision forward of what’s possible for us in the 365 days that lie ahead.
And as with each approaching January, there’s always one really hot topic, and that is the New Year’s resolution. But if you are somebody who has historically created a big list of New Year’s resolutions that you’re going to tackle, the odds are that it has not been a very successful strategy, although you may tend to repeat it year after year after year.
If we’re being honest, what we all want is real and lasting change. But unfortunately, we’re just not that good at defining the change we want or casting a vision for the outcome we desire.
The process of change can be very uncomfortable.
So I want you to ask yourself three key things this year to create sustainable and positive change in your life.
What am I stepping toward?
Instead of thinking about what you are losing, think about what you are stepping toward. Who do you want to be at this time next year? For example, if your goal is to lose weight, you might focus only on what you need to stop doing (stop eating treats, stop snacking). But if you instead reframe it as a goal to be a fit, healthy human being by the end of the year, doesn’t that sound better? And then what are the habits that make you fit and healthy? Those are the ones you want to adopt.
What is the ONE habit I’m going to tackle first?
You can only change one habit at a time. You may do a great job of establishing the vision of who this woman is that you want to be, but then you want to do all the things at the same time. So there’s this mad dash at the beginning of the year to change everything. And when we try to change everything, we generally succeed in nothing. Conversely, by doing one at a time, your odds of being able to sustain that change and build upon it are much, much higher.
How am I going to manage the mental burden of change?
As women, we tend to have a heavy mental load to begin with. And guess what habit change requires? It requires another dose of mental burden. All of a sudden, things you’ve been doing on autopilot for years require thought and that can be crushing. When you are adopting any new habit, like working out, you have new decisions to make. What exercise am I gonna do? Do I know how to perform the exercise? Where am I doing it? What am I wearing? What time am I doing it? Who’s going with me? Who’s watching the kids while I’m doing it? Right? All of these things are mental burdens added to the actual act of doing it. And so when we tackle one habit at a time, we spread out the mental burden. We wait for the mental burden of this new habit to go down because it’s starting to become automated. And then we can move on to the next.
So let’s get after it in January, and we can all be better versions of ourselves next year. And if you want to talk about getting some support along the way, set up some time to chat with me and see if coaching is the right next step for you.
