It’s time to cut out unrealistic goals for the new year.
There’s something about December 31st that makes everyone feel the end of the year “chaos” and the urge to find ways to end the year smoothly. We are all on blame for reflecting on the past year and how far we have become and decided to look back on our new year’s resolutions. Somethings happened and were great. Others didn’t, and we wonder where we went wrong. Maybe setting a goal of going to the gym seven days a week was not much compliant with our reality. Still, we continue making the resolutions hoping that the midnight fireworks will motivate us to make it happen.
The thing is that once the clock marks midnight and we are all ecstatic watching the fireworks with people we love, we tend to attach ourselves to resolutions that, in the end, can only make us feel more frustrated than before. I know we love to believe that once the calendar changes from one year to another, we want to feel the change in ourselves. Feel that we can finally start over, while the truth is that every day is a great new start.
The issue with resolutions is that they can bring us down if not completed, and being honest, it is very challenging to meet all our resolutions. There’s the power of setting intentions: it is much more positive and connects yourself to the universe as part of the whole instead of trying to control everything.
I’ve talked before about the power of manifesting our dreams, and intentions go in the same lines. We set ourselves for success without a specific journey, making it even more special. We know where we want to get, but the universe will guide us on the best pathway for us, where we will learn the most to become who we want to be.
While this can be an attractive choice, we still need to do everything in our power to make our dreams happen. But differently than the resolutions that can feel like a self-sabotage tool some days, our intentions will always be with us and makes us more open to accepting that it’s okay if we slept in and missed our morning routine.
Sticking to new habits can be pretty challenging, but our intentions of becoming our best selves are there every day with us. The truth is that when we quit cultivating a specific habit, that we know deep down is for our best, is because we are probably self-sabotaging. Here are some tips to fight that:
The power comes from inside
When I started researching to write my book Brand You, I fully understood the power of our mindset and how that affects our reality. We often look at our goals and objectives in life from a perspective that doesn’t give out much motivation for us. Approaching it from a different perspective can completely change our view of getting there.
Our true power, motivation—or how you want to call it—doesn’t come overnight, or if it does, it doesn’t stay long with us. That is because we don’t connect with our deep selves. Understanding who we are, who we were, and who we want to become is the first step to cultivating a healthy and coherent self-relationship with reality. If we don’t connect with our inner voices, we’ll always listen to the exterior voices that don’t know what we want.
Connecting to our most higher self is where we get consistency, and that, my friend, is the key to success. To prove that, do some research about the most recognizable personalities in the world: they all have specific activities daily that help them concentrate and connect to themselves, like meditation in the morning.
Once you have truly connected to yourself at the highest level, you will understand the why behind your what, and that will serve as fuel to go after what you want.
Battles & truce
We all got to this point, thanks to all the things that happened in our past. Identifying battles that made us become who we are today is crucial to understand that we may face more to get where we want to. Do you know the turning point in your life that made you realize you needed to change something? Recognize that and write it down. Celebrate who you became after that. Make a truce with yourself.
Recognizing our battles is an essential step in getting focused to go after what we aim in life, forgiving some actions we had in the past, and moving forward to leave what already happened where it is supposed to be.
Support brings fuel
We all heard before that who we surround ourselves with is who we are at the end of the day. This is not wrong. Surrounding ourselves with supportive people will only bring out the best of us to be our best version for ourselves and for who we love. Seek support from people that want to see you happy and succeed.
A great way to do that is to write down the people in your life who encourage you, and the ones you believe do not necessarily help you when you need them. A good support person should be positive, open-minded, versatile, practical, compassionate, and most of all, who loves having you around.
“You don’t have to make grand shifts and then find ways to maintain them; you make gradual shifts that are allowed to ebb and flow toward the goal.”
Vienna Pharaon, for Poosh Interview
When we plan our New Year’s Resolutions, it’s common to think about goals that may not be what we want, but we see other people doing it, and we think we should be there too. However, if there’s one thing you should take away from this article is to turn back the focus to yourself. Don’t focus on what others are doing, have done, or will be doing. Everyone has their unique path and journey to live, and comparing us to others is not realistic. For that, here are some things that can help you reframe the focus to yourself:
- paper and pen… write!
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Do you celebrate your small wins as much as you do your significant accomplishments? Write down five things that you have accomplished in life so far that make you feel like the proudest person ever. It can be that you got that summer job, or you passed your test, or you moved to a new city.
After you are done writing, put that list where you often look at your bathroom mirror, bedroom wall, and lock screen wallpaper on the phone. It must be something that you’ll be reminded of daily. Test this, and you’ll see your motivation change!
- Why not?
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We often find many excuses for not accomplishing what we aim for. Yes, this is more common than we think. “I wasn’t ready for the test; that’s why I got a bad score,” “My boss doesn’t like me; that’s why I didn’t get the promotion.” Most of the time, this negative thinking is not even conscious anymore. Try identifying when they come to you and what you can do to reframe that thought.
An excellent way to practice this is to ask yourself what you got to lose if you missed that opportunity instead of what you have to gain. This is also a mindset shift that makes you see things more clearly.
- Choose your morning routine
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Our mornings are essential and the start point of our day. The way you wake up and set your intention once the alarm goes off is how your day will go. BUT, every person needs a specific morning routine to themselves. Don’t try to fit someone else’s routine into your day because you will soon feel tired and bored. It would be best to focus your energy on finding what works for you and you only. Do you instead do your physical exercise in the morning? Do you need to have relaxing mornings to be productive during the day? If you don’t like eating breakfast, what can you try?
- Boundaries are a girl’s best friend
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Setting boundaries is something that we know it’s essential, but I bet many of us never thought about writing down what we don’t want to tolerate in our lives anymore. When we write things down, the tendency is for it to work as a stamp in our brains and be a reminder of what we want in our lives. Sticking to what we think is where the line crosses will help us find what we’re looking for. An excellent way to practice this is to write a list of situations that you don’t want to tolerate more starting this year.
- Values are everything
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I cannot count how many times I noticed something bothered me and couldn’t say why. When a situation touches a personal value, we instantly feel bad. Try to identify moments when you felt that way and write down the words that come to your mind: is it justice? Respect? Whatever it is, it’s important to you. Our daily choices should be based on what we believe and feel good about. Write down at least five words that you think represent what’s important to you and put them in someplace you are daily reminded of.
“There are always so many obstacles to reach success. Why create more?”
Karen Berg, Author of Your Self-Sabotage Survival Guide: How to Go From Why Me? To Why Not?
This new year, make things different. New year, new you? Maybe. Only if you pick wisely always to choose yourself over the resolution you didn’t stick to last year.
Connecting to our inner side will only allow us to see ourselves as part of the universe and receive nothing but the good from it. What is meant to be for you, it will: set your intentions.
Happy New Year, best version of you!