Note to Self

It’s a new year, a new start. Who you decide to be in the coming 12 months can be the difference between you getting the job that you want, making the healthy changes in your life, turning your business around or staying exactly where you are. You will have made resolutions at the end of 2020 to do more of something and less of something else. You will have made a pact to quit a bad habit and if you were feeling ambitious, replacing it with a good habit. To those who were feeling the positive energy that a new year can bring, even after having faced 2020 head on, I want to congratulate you. It takes a lot to reach into yourselves and find the excitement a new year brings and use this energy to make positive changes in your life.  

For some of us however, resolutions will have been difficult to create. Our 2020 ones might still be there untouched, or even resolutions from years before 2020 that we thought we would try completing in 2020. Therefore, the idea of adding to this long list of resolutions will seem more daunting this year, when hope is not as abundant as it has been in the past. There is a reason why, for some people, resolutions do not work – and that is that they focus on actions we must take. However, in order to be able to take said actions, we need to understand who we are, what our values are and which character strengths we possess that will empower us to follow through no matter what. 

It is not possible to change your habits without first reflecting on who you are and why you behave in such a way. You can not change yourself without understanding who you are now. And you can not work around the hand that life has dealt you without figuring out how you want to use your strengths, who you are now and who you would like to be by the end. When you start reflecting on the type of person that you would like to become rather than the changes that you would like to make in your life, you are more likely to be able to follow through on your challenge. 

Sometimes, learning who we are and reflecting on who we want to be can inspire the kind of actions in our lives that will bring about the positive changes that we are looking for. There are many ways in which you can learn more about yourself, from observing your actions, writing down your thoughts, taking a personality test to having a session with a coach 😉. From there you can envision who you would like to be:

• What are the values that you would like to nurture?
• What are the ways in which you can use your strengths to empower yourself?
• What about yourself would you like to improve?

As you journal your thoughts, pick a word, or create a quote for yourself, something you can refer to whenever you feel you need a reminder or inspiration. How will you use this word/quote to inform how you think and feel? Sometimes, in order to follow through with an action that we have decided upon, we need to feel a certain way, or think certain thoughts to become motivated. Having a word/quote to be able to psych yourself up can be the difference between accomplishing a task and just thinking about doing it.