Your Journey To The Year Of You: Your Best year Ever!
1. Reflect
This is a great time to pull out your journal, or start a new one. Begin by taking time to reflect on what is working and what you love about your life.
Is there anything you would like to change? You may love your life’s direction and want to ensure this path continues or even make some changes to improve it!
What makes you happy and what are your passions? Can you remember something you loved when you were younger and want to revisit? Where do you feel the most alive and inspired?
On the other hand, what exhausts you, drains your energy or frustrates you? Can you change yourself, or do you need to change the situation? Use these questions as a guide.
2. Make Goals
Once you have reflected on what you want to add, change, eliminate in the coming year, think about how to make that happen. What goals do you need to reach to live your best year ever?
For example, if making more time to connect with friends is something you want to increase for more joy in your life, figure out what that looks like. Who are the people that you are wanting to see, and how much time do you want to commit? Can you plan one day per week or weekend, or one weekend per month where you make specific plans to see people you care about? Set realistic goals for yourself.
3. Plan It Out.
Plan out your roadmap. What are the steps between start and finish, and how will you achieve them?
Using the example above, create a list of those you want to spend more time with. Consider the activities or situations you’d like to share with them. Morning coffee chat, afternoon hikes, a shared dinner, beach trips, museums or even a zoom call. Look at your schedule and see what works for you, timing wise, and then reach out and make plans!
4. Hold Yourself Accountable.
Accountability is a huge factor in making this your year. So keep this promise to yourself. And to help keep you accountable, let those friends all know that this is the year that you want to make sure you spend more time with them. Sharing our goals with others who we love and respect can help keep us on track.
5. Realize That Discipline Will Beat Out Motivation.
You need motivation, of course. But the discipline of setting good habits creates a new pattern that gets your through the days that motivations isn’t enough. For instance, if you are training to run a race, there will be days when you won’t be motivated to get out of bed. On these days, discipline and a just-do-it attitude will come in handy and help you succeed.
We are all so busy in our lives that we often skimp out on some of the things that are most important to our internal happiness. If, for example, you are disciplined in making plans with friends in advance, you set yourself up for joy in your life.
6. Consider Daily and Monthly Check-Ins
Depending on what your Best year Ever, s about, consider doing daily check-ins. For example, if gratitude is your theme, every night, practice gratitude.
If your year is about self-care, schedule time, daily or weekly, to ensure you have incorporated self-care into your schedule.
If you want to stay on track and have a great year, you will need to check in periodically to make sure you are on track. Reviewing helps you reflect and make changes to keep you on course. It enables you to figure out what’s getting in your way and helps you re-adjust to continue moving forward.
7. Write In Your Journal.
Journaling is important. Studies have shown that writing in a journal helps people keep their goals. For example, one study found that people who wrote out their goals and sent them to others kept them more often than those who simply wrote them down.
Separately, if you need help with journaling, many journals already provide prompts to help you get to know yourself better and clarify your thoughts.
8. Don’t Get Discouraged. Practice Resilience.
We all have tough days. So, it’s important to remember that we are not perfect. We are human; don’t get discouraged. Instead, reframe your thoughts to find the lesson or the positive side of what is going on.
Work on your resilience, which helps you rally and recover from challenging situations. Train yourself to remain optimistic, see the good in life, and recognize that tough times pass, helping you gather the strength to do hard things and move forward and through situations rather than avoiding them or becoming so overwhelmed that you shut down.
9. Grow Out Of Your Comfort Zone.
Remember that the focusing on creating your best year may mean growing out of your comfort zone. We love comfort. It’s why we would rather be comfy in our pj’s, sitting by a cozy warm fire, drinking something hot on a cold, snowy day.
We can do hard things and learn to enjoy the process. Interestingly, tasks that require more effort can bring a sense of satisfaction, and will most likely help us learn about ourselves along our journey, too. Keep in mind that sometimes moving out of our comfort zone means taking a risk that we might fail. Yes, we might. But we also might succeed.
Yet, even if we do fail, failure provides an excellent opportunity for growth. It helps to remind ourselves that failing, feeling discouraged and finding something difficult and challenging is okay. We are human, not perfect. How we respond to failure and learn from it can fuel our growth and success
Remember to be kind to yourself, and know that there are many steps involved in making positive changes to long-standing habits. Think about what is waiting on the other side of this journey. Without a doubt, it will be worth seeing how far we’ve grown and what we’ve accomplished at the end of the year.
As always, The Gentle Place would love to be part of making this year Best year Ever! Massage, Yoga, Meditation and other self-care tools are our specialty! We hope to be on this journey with you in 2023!