The first of the year is a great moment to check your goals, much like a mile marker or intersection, where are you? Are you on the way? Did you complete some goals and are therefore ready for new ones? The first of every month is a also a great time to visit and revisit these questions. So why all the January hype? I suppose it goes back to advertisers trying to make a dollar, which in modern times means hype across social media about a new year and a new me!
Maybe I’m cheap, but I don’t buy it. Humans are not Amazon Prime, a new us doesn’t arrive in 2-4 days! (That was a great meme I saw recently.) The experts say it takes 14 days of consistency to form a habit. This doesn’t magically happen when we wake up. Nor is there some magic energy that propels us to success. We know this. So why do we buy the hype? The Diets. The gym memberships? Dry January? Why? Because it is an easy starting point. And everyone else is, so why not maximize the camaraderie? So here we are, 7 whole days into the new year, how are those goals? How much are you shaming your self for your inability to overhaul your life in 7 days? ... yeah, that’s what I thought.
Let me be clear: guilt and shame do NOT bring successful change. They bring anxiety, frustration, pain, compliance, and more guilt and shame, but not successful change. And there is absolutely nothing about January that will magically change that. So, how can you change how you approach change? Here are my 4 tips!
1. Set SMART goals. Simple, measurable, attainable, reasonable, time sensitive goals. Start small and simple. You didn’t arrive here in one month did you? Ok, so why fix it all in one! Take those big goals and break them down.
2. Good, better, best. When setting reasonable and attainable goals we have to be honest about what is a good enough result, what is a better result, and what is the best result? Attaining a good result is just as worthy of celebration as attaining your best result. Honor and celebrate your success as you go, then you’ll want to create more!
3. Have a shame buddy. You know that person in your life who is brutally honest, they love you enough to call you out? Them! Tell them how you are shaming you for not achieving your goals and let them truth those lies right outta ya! Then celebrate your success and ability to stick out your plans when it gets rough. The hardest part is in your head!
4. “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it.” - Anne of Green Gables. Receive grace my friend. You can only do your best today, and some days feel ruined before they start. That’s ok, do your best and tomorrow make better/different choices. A practice I am still learning to implement is when today goes off the rails, make choices in the evening to set tomorrow up to be better. While being fully present helps one delight in life, it is also wise to look at the bigger picture, what residue remains from yesterday? What does tomorrow hold? What needs to be done now to put today to rest, and prepare me for tomorrow?
January holds no magic. Life won’t be different in February unless you make one consistent choice every day. And you DO have all the magic you need in your self, so set some goals and enjoy the process of achieving them, you amazing achiever you!
Want to be more proactive in your self care? Get your free resource here!
I have been MIA for a couple weeks, not because I got caught up in the busyness of Christmas, but because I broke and to heal I needed to take care of me. This meant I had no capacity to put out a blog, I could barely “adult” if I’m honest. I could jump right past what broke me and on to how self care healed me, but the truth is lack of care caused me to be drained, not processing life, grief, loss, and anxiety caused a backlog that combined with two large curveballs and broke me.
This year has been a great lesson to me in ALL the ways I care for me. From the way that I eat, to how much sleep I get, to spending time with friends, to privately processing in a journal. These daily moments are, over all, more helpful and caring than a periodic spa day! It is so easy to equate self care with little luxuries, but it is the kindness and care we show ourselves each day that makes the greatest impact.
So where did I go wrong? My sleep schedule was the first to go. My diet became more erratic. And I was giving a lot, while not receiving enough. I felt the drain and flailed, grasping at air to try not to crash, but I did crash. And I broke a little in the process.
The thing about breaking is that in the process we end up losing something we didn’t actually need to carry. The self carries so much in life. And it collects stuff we don’t need, the weight of it all adding to our burdens, dragging us down, breaking us. The truth I am reminded of in this process is that there is no healing if we don’t first break. Healing requires us to release that which causes pain. That which burdens. The lies we choose to believe. When we don’t allow ourselves to do this difficult work of letting go of what causes the pain, to put down our burdens, and to let the tough truth dispel the lies, we break.
So now what? The root cause of my breakdown was grief. As I walked through December I took account of my year and was overwhelmed by the dreams that died this year. The goals not achieved. Time with friends sacrificed to pandemic compliance. And the deaths of friends and family. It is easy to shake my fist at 2020 and curse it. But these are the struggles of life, not just a year. After identifying the root and grieving my losses I took the time to restore. There was sleep and good food. There were phone calls to friends who support and encourage. I fed my mind, my soul, and my body while rejecting lies about how lazy I am, what a failure I am, and how could this happen when I know better? But this is the truth of this year, as exceptional as it’s been, so many normal things have happened, and we can’t live on the adrenaline of the exceptional. We MUST make choices to keep routine, feed our selves, and to show how valuable we are by valuing ourselves.
I cannot wait for the adventures of this new year! How about you?
I have a huge personal goal that I won’t achieve this year. I grieve that I won’t, and I accept that I am not giving up on it until I do achieve it. Because of this it is so easy for me to want to decide that 2020 was a failure. But in pausing to do the work of honestly assessing my year I realize the opposite is true, 2020 held much growth for me, opportunities unforeseen, and some personal work that I didn’t realize was needed. Over a medium such as this I want to lightly celebrate that I got to hike more this year than a “normal” year would of allowed. But let’s get real, I preach that self care can heal, that it propels us into presenting who we really are to the world, and affords us what we need to live our best lives! I want you to know that I practice what I preach, so here goes, this year I cared for my self in mind, body, and soul in these ways:
First I prioritized sleep and water, without enough of each the brain struggles to function, the body struggles, and there is no capacity for soul care. In life first things must come first, this lesson has been repeated for me throughout this whole year. In getting enough sleep, and in drinking enough water, I’ve noticed improvements in mood; ability to focus; weight management; recovery from exercise; consistent energy levels; increased initiative and follow through; and the surprising winner, increased upholding of my own boundaries! What? I know, sounds so weird, but if I’m going to put me to sleep in time I must turn off first. So I reinforced some boundaries around texting, streaming, and social media while establishing a nighttime routine that fits who I am now and what I need to get to sleep on time.
Second, I prioritized journaling. What did I have to journal about in 2020? A lot! As part of my boundaries I have been learning what needs to be processed privately in a journal, and what needs to be processed with friends. Because of the change in how we connect in 2020 I found it increasingly easy to just talk to friends over one medium or another. The problem is that my private struggles were getting left all over the place, but in taking the time to put them in my journal, to process thoroughly before discussing with a friend, not only did I benefit from the personal growth, I could then decide how to present myself in this new knowledge to said friend and keep friend time for friend stuff, not just me stuff!
Third, I admitted and began to work on my food habits. I don’t eat as consistently or as nutritiously as needed and my body pays for it. Food is so good! It cares for us like only food can! And in addressing my bad food habits I discovered a lot about other bad habits that I’ve developed! Sure I use really good supplements to support where modern food falls short, but they cannot make up for a lack of food, a lack of calories, or a lack of overall nutrients. It is easy to write a resolution of losing 20lbs and judging ones success based on a number. It is far more difficult to look at ones knowledge and behaviors and make changes accordingly. I would love to tell you that I hit my weight loss goals, but I didn’t. Instead I discovered that my bad foods habits spill over into all areas of my life and those need to be addressed too. Like I said, I did a lot of unexpected personal work this year!
Which brings me to my fourth, and final, work of self care that has brought such a change in me this year: addressing my worthiness. Through many conversations I’ve discovered most folks don’t feel worthy to care for themselves, for whatever reason they have come to believe this. I am no different. I’ve spent a lot of this year challenging these beliefs, and learning to replace the behaviors learned from them. What this looks like is me asking why I think that I’m not worthy of sleep, and instead of working hard to prove myself and losing sleep, I choose to be worthy of care and put me to sleep. Small changes that have increased my confidence, health, and mental and spiritual well-being, creating a much bigger overall change.
Please don’t write off 2020 as a failure. Pause, do the work, and agree with me and Manchester Orchestra: “Let me open my eyes and be glad that I got here.” - The Silence
There is a lot of weariness these days. It goes beyond our natural desire to embrace the rhythm of late autumn and get more rest as there is less light, and is continuously effected by the steady stream of everything. Weariness brings to me the desire to be sour about life. It begins subtly, and grows into a negative, bitter root that I must dig out, if I don’t nip it at the start. And then the week of Thanksgiving comes, a week when we are all reminded to an obnoxious level of how fortunate we are and all that we can and should be thankful for. It’s enough to make anyone become even more numb, taking it all the more for granted. It can get comfortably familiar being bitter and numb to the goodness. And when one is comfortable, why change?
This week I’ve been looking beyond thankfulness to contentment. What does it mean to be content? I dug into some of the etymology and it goes make to the Middle Ages when it meant to satisfy a debt. There are different kinds of debts, obviously financial, but we also owe favors, and we owe ourselves a lot of care - if we are honest. And what about satisfaction? Contentment includes satisfaction, how does one feel satisfied when they look around and see... this weird chaos of 2020. I have found three ways to increase contentment: manage expectations, choosing thankfulness, and delighting in the good everywhere we find it!
If managing expectations sounds like the advice you needed before the turkey went in the oven remember that satisfaction starts with you, your personal work, your goals, your desires met and unmet. We all have unrealistic expectations at some point in life! And there are many tools to help gauge the attainability of a goal, such as the SMART Goals acrostic:
Specific - as specific as possible.
Measurable - the achievement can be defined.
Attainable - actually able to work towards and achieve.
Reasonable - practical.
Time based - a deadline that will be met.
While tools like this are often applied in super practical settings like weight loss, a new job or promotion, or whatever tangible task one desires to accomplish, it can also be applied to expectations. Expecting to fall in love in 2020? Well, how are you meeting that expectation? Expecting your mom to behave quite differently than she normally does? While that is specific, you cannot actually attain this goal because you have no control over her behavior, only your own. The more I set my goals for contentment and satisfaction on my own shoulders, my own behaviors, that which I do have control over, the more content I become. The more I set my expectations of others in line with how they behave around me, the less frustrated I am because I expect it, plan for it, and know to speak to it.
Behind behaviors are attitudes and personal stories. A current popular phrase is “speaking MY truth.” So here is some universal truth that influences your personal truth: your thinking influences your attitude, and you can choose the thoughts that you want to entertain, and which ones to let go of! Your thoughts impact your truth. You can change your mind, it is ok. You can choose to be thankful while sick. You can choose to be thankful when you don’t know how the bills will get paid this month. You can choose to the thankful when you don’t know where your food is coming from. You can choose to be thankful when it seems like everyone you know hates you. You can choose because you can. It all sits on what you focus on. I am thankful for the ability to work through difficult situations, I’ve learned that again this year. I am thankful for what I do have, and therefore use it more wisely, and show it more care. Out of thankfulness comes new perspective, new behaviors, new desires, a new understanding of truth.
Alongside choosing thankfulness is delighting in the good! We don’t celebrate our successes enough! Often I don’t identify them, or feel obligated to play them down in a veil of false modesty. Lately the Fatboy Slim song “Praise You” has been stuck in my head:
We’ve come a long, long way together,
Through the hard times and the good.
I have to celebrate you baby,
I have to praise you like I should.
Sometimes our celebration seems menial: I got 8 hours of sleep!
Sometimes our celebration is significant: I got the promotion!
Sometimes it is simply pausing throughout the day to acknowledge the good in the day: a kindness; a friend; coffee; something beautiful; something delicious; making a tough, but healthy, choice when tempted with an easy, but unhealthy, choice.
This feels weird in our culture because we aren’t supposed to celebrate ourselves, it’s viewed as being prideful, but in actuality delighting in the good, celebrating success small and large, appreciating and finding satisfaction in the daily, isn’t about having an attitude of pride, but an attitude of thankfulness! Seeing our own success and delighting in it means we are encouraged to continue on in success! It is far more productive than judgement and shame, which lock us up with anxiety. So this is your challenge: set your expectations reasonably, choose to be thankful as you walk, and delight in your success as you go. Try it for one day, and tell me below how it goes!
If you are really struggling here, helping folks do this is what I do. Email me below to set up a free consultation on how coaching can help you grow!
Professionally and privately I am regularly confided in regarding relational problems. These confidences can be split into two groups: “FIX THEM!” and “Help me find a better way.” I don’t have the ability to fix anyone. I can only guide the person in front of me to a better understanding of their self, and to make the choices they want to make, instead of falling for what they dislike. I have found that we teach people how to have relationship with us, we do this through what we share with an individual, through how we treat ourselves, and by the boundaries that we enforce on those with whom we are in relationship.
Relationships are so organic in the human experience that we don’t think about how they are formed, until we struggle to form them. CS Lewis described making a friend as discovering someone with a mutual interest and saying “hey! You like that too!” In a cold, clinical, form relationships begin as Lewis observed, and remain as both parties mutually invest through revealing self, asking questions, and continuing to show interest in the others life. As we age we aren’t around as many people, and those we have known for decades can fade away, or choose not to keep up with who we have become. We feel this disconnect in different ways, more so in our current circumstances, and we find ourselves wondering if we want to maintain relationship, or attempt to make new friends who connect to who we are now. There is no blanket answer, but before you decide consider how we teach people to have relationship with us through how we treat ourselves and the boundaries we hold.
I have lost count of how many times I’ve told the story of my professor who looked around the room and then informed us “we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, but I’ve seen how horribly some of you treat yourselves, and I don’t want to be treated so poorly.” I remember being shook to my core because that was me! I treated me horribly, yet wanted others to treat me better than I treated myself. I didn’t know how to be loved and cared for. But in that moment I wanted to learn! These are not obvious behaviors, they are lower conscious and subtle, but to the observant eye, to those who need broken, needy friends, they are beacons. This is why when we set boundaries, treat our selves better, and require those that call us friend to treat us with respect. People fuss, cause drama, and disappear when they are no longer allowed to treat me poorly. Therefore self care is as vital as being your self, and it is part of being true to your self. Self care can increase self awareness, in understanding what is and is not acceptable behavior I can then refuse to hang around people who choose to behave badly. When I treat myself well, then I can accept good treatment from others, and begin to expect and require it. This can be a slow process, but how wonderful to have less drama, less chaos, and less stress.
Boundaries are the other hand, working side by side with self care. As I see how people treat me I can then make choices about what is and isn’t acceptable treatment. I can draw a line, this is as far as this person, or anyone, can go. We all agree that violence is bad, so it is easy to make the assertion “I refuse to be around violent people.” But what happens when that violent person is your parent? Or lover? It is easy to justify their behavior. But that means you compromise your boundary. It is a grace to require others to honor my boundaries. Not only because I deserve their respect in those areas, but if they are struggling in this area and I speak, not yell, to them regarding it, explaining their precise behavior and how it hurts and disrespects me, and why I won’t allow it any more, that is grace, giving them a chance to choose growth, or to stay the same and let me walk away. The truth is all relationships shape us, they either grow us, or crush us. We choose to stay and grow together, or walk on to something new. Boundaries are formed intentionally, enforced responsibly, and require those with whom we are building relationship to choose. Some choices are easy. Some significantly more difficult. This is life.
This year has afforded us more time for self reflection. And less opportunity to interact with others. Therefore as we approach the holidays it is bringing up a lot of experiences and feelings towards friends and family. Now is the time to reflect on how you want to be treated, how you want to treat others, and to prepare some pocket answers for those folks that will try to cross the line. Write them down. Check to see if they are too muddied or snarky. Short and precise is the goal; ”no thank you.” or “I’d rather not discuss that.” are perfectly legitimate answers. Need more? This is what I do! Drop me a line below and let’s be ready for the holidays.
