With motivation at an all-time high, the beginning of a new year and a new decade is extremely enticing and can also trigger feelings of anxiety and stress at the same time. What better way to make moves toward our New Year’s wellness goals than by showing some love to our self care?
“What should I be doing that I wasn’t doing last year?”
“What can I be doing more of?”
“Where do I see myself in the next decade?”
It’s that time of the year when full-fledged-goal-setting is in motion.
So I have a question for you…whatever examples of self care goals you have in mind, are you’re feeling truly excited and optimistic about them, or stressed about them? Like most of us, it’s probably a lttle of both.
While just enough stress can be healthy to light our fire, if the stress of reaching your goals is giving you a feeling of constant overwhelm or robbing you of your joy, it’s a good indicator to take a moment and check in with yourself.
Resolution Overwhelm
One of the reasons I love the month being further along is that while the new year is still in full swing, the New Year’s Resolutions mania is dialed down. Because the (hard, for some) truth of the matter is that they just don’t work for most people. Followed by…you are not failing. Followed by…there are much better ways to hit your flow.
Have you ever asked yourself why well-intentioned people slip into old habits and miss out on the results they really wanted? One of the reasons resolutions are so fleeting is, at the end of the day willpower and aspirations alone aren’t enough when we’re dealing with subconscious patterns and habits.
So, if you’d like the self care goals you have in mind to stick beyond just the new year and even the entire decade…for your whole life, a few small shifts can help you get to the place where you feel your best and live an intentional lifestyle that you fall in LOVE with. Here are 3 areas worth exploring…
More Alignment Less Achievement
Ambitious people have a tendency to think we can tackle ALL the big goals and dreams at once. But with that creative, ambitious, driven spirit comes the need to be smart and strategic about our commitments. Taking on too much is a recipe for overwhelm, underperformance, and stress. None of which will lead to the happiness and fulfillment you deserve. Oftentimes once we’ve done all the things, checked off every last one on the list, we’re left with a void or a sense of emptiness, like…what’s next?
This is a good opportunity to check in and ask ourselves are my achievments serving me as well as they could? At some point, it’s likely that the desire to serve at the capacity you know you can is going to knudge you – that desire at the deepest core of our being to feel a real sense of purpose. Ultimately we want to feel that who we are and what we do matters – did we make a difference while we were here? Suddenly, the feeling of being more in alignment with our deeper intentions becomes the goal, over crushing our achievements.
More Self Empowerment Less Self Defeat
When we’re setting a goal or intention questions are a common part of the process. Empowering questions allow us to create more intentional goals. Something as simple as flipping questions around on themselves can change a goal from self limiting to self empowering. For example, what should I be doing that I wasn’t doing last year? OR what can I do more of this year that would help me feel my best and live my best life? Which one feels more empowering?
It’s much more desirable to work towards something purposeful like living your best life than feeling defeated about something you weren’t already doing – which is basically piling more defeat on top of defeat. Let’s take a look at how small shifts in the questions from earlier make them feel more empowering…
“What can I be doing more of?” reframed to…
“What’s truly lighting me up right now and how can I do more of it?” or “Where can I carve out some time in my schedule to work out?”
“Where do I see myself in the next ten years?” reframed to…
“What actions can I take regularly to get closer to living an intentional and fulfilling life?” or “What would make my life feel joyful and full of purpose over the next ten years and beyond?”
Small shifts to choose more self empowerment and less self defeat.
More Flow Less Stress
More flow less stress is about creating goals with soul. It’s about discovering our core desired feelings to help us create habits that we have a deep connection with – habits that don’t just fall by the wayside, but become a mainstay in living our intentional life.
When we tune into our core desired feelings we get really clear on what what lights us up and from there we begin to make small shifts away from creating habits that are less likely to sustain us, to creating habits that are more meaningful and deeply rooted in our whole being.
Think about it. A goal starts out as as a vision or intention and sometimes we write it down. It’s what we choose to do with that intention that illuminates it and manifests it as our reality…so what feelings are you desiring more of ???
Here’s to small shifts to light up your self care in the next decade and beyond + a few of my favorite things to help get you there. All love.
XOXOXO