Tag: New Years Resolutions

Set your BEST goals: 12 questions to do it RIGHT + FREE PRINTABLE!

Post author By Support Elf
Post date January 5, 2021
No Comments on Set your BEST goals: 12 questions to do it RIGHT + FREE PRINTABLE!

Want to know why many goals fail? I’ll tell you why. Because they are not the right goals.

They are goals that have been slapped together in haste as a New Year’s Resolution or because they are The Expected Thing You Should Want and they will often fail because you simply don’t have the real motivational juice to take you through to the finishing line. In the case of the goals of expectation of others, the only thing worse than not achieving your goal IS achieving it.

So, how to set your goals on a firmer footing? Let’s them percolate for a moment in the form of wishes – let what YOU REALLY desire, (that’s YOU, not your mamma/gramps/boss/spouse/etc) simmer to the surface.

When you set that goal, you want to know it’s 110% the direction that’s RIGHT for you – so you WILL find the commitment required to make it happen.

So – spend a little time in the Wish Creation Department today. Allow yourself the time to explore, play, and create without the pressure of deadlines and tasks. Pause momentarily in the stage of kicking ideas around to see what feels right for you.

This is all about tapping into your imagination, creativity, and the voice of your inner self before you go hard out on the doing. You want to be doing the RIGHT things in the RIGHT direction!

Download your ‘‘What Do You Really Want’ Guided Workbook here.

There are some Wish Creating questions for you. Answer them honestly, don’t edit yourself. The first response that jumps into your head is usually the right one. Don’t second guess and doubt yourself. Whatever your first instinctive response is, is totally fine.

This is a judgment-free zone – we are just playing with thoughts and words here.

Just see what comes up for you before you rush into action.

Tags 2021, challenging beliefs, Goalsetting, New Years Resolutions

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Why You Don’t Need A ‘New You’

Post author By Support Elf
Post date December 28, 2020
No Comments on Why You Don’t Need A ‘New You’

“Happy New Year! Happy New You!” How many headlines will you see screaming that this month? Too many to count, I suspect.

I am going to be really subversive here (I know, I’m such a rebel) and kick off the New Year with a directly contradictory premise: You don’t need a “New You”.

You are not broken! You are whole and complete.

Life and self-improvement is a PROCESS. A process means it’s ongoing. It doesn’t end until you do. It is never complete. Life is always in a state of beautiful incompletion.

We are all works in progress. For the whole of our lives. It is never “done”. It can never be done! We will be learning and growing into an ever-expanded version of our best self, our whole life. It’s a glorious process of growth. It’s about expansion and about improvement and inspiration. It’s about reaching a little higher, being a little braver, asking for a little more. It’s not about fixing something that’s broken.

You are not broken and anyone who tells you you are is lying. Don’t believe them.

A New Year is simply a convenient time to dust off the cobwebs and assess where we are at with our life’s project. Our work in progress. It’s just a milestone in the journey. A reminder to pause and reflect.

So, this year I am offering you some different kinds of New Year resolutions. Ones that delight you rather than punish you. Goals that draw you forward effortlessly in the energy of growth rather than beating you up in the energy of “not quite good enough”. Principles that lift you up, rather than tear you down for not being smart, thin, fun, rich enough – or whatever.

Because you, you dear reader, are enough.

Make your resolutions something that make your soul sing not fill you with an increasing creeping feeling of dread. Resolve toward what makes you grow, not what you want to fix.

• Resolve to laugh more in 2021.
• Resolve to love more in 2021.
• Resolve to smell the roses more in 2021.
• Resolve to connect more in 2021.
• Resolve to speak kindly to yourself, with love and compassion, in 2021.
• Resolve to strive for progress not for perfection in 2021.
• Resolve to honour your body and soul in 2021.
• Resolve never to stop growing, learning and expanding in 2021.
• Resolve to be all that you can be, the happiest version of yourself in 2021.

That’s what I wish for you. You are not broken. You never were. Embrace the glorious mess of all that you are and the beauty this year is going to unfold at your feet. Happy New Year.

Tags 2021, flexible thinking, Happiness, New Years Resolutions

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The 6 Key Questions YOU need to review!

Post author By Support Elf
Post date December 17, 2019
No Comments on The 6 Key Questions YOU need to review!

As John Lennon so beautifully sang, “And so this is Christmas….and what have you done?”

Here are some thought starters for you to ponder (perhaps with a journal and a cold beer in hand) over the summer to bring this past year to a considered close and set yourself up for the best of all things in the New Year.

Farewell

What would you like to farewell and leave behind this year? What have you outgrown? Perhaps it’s a relationship or a social situation or an obligation. Maybe you feel ready for a new career or a new location. What would you like to farewell and gently close the door on?

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Gratitude

What are you most grateful for this past year? What worked out well for you, better perhaps than you anticipated? Who came into your life or stepped up in your life in a way that enhanced it? To what and to whom do you feel appreciative for their contribution to your life this year? Have you told them?

____________________________________________________________________

Accomplishment

What are your proudest achievements this year? Where did you give the most of yourself? When did you push yourself our of your comfort zone? Where and how did you grow? What are your finest accomplishments of the year?

____________________________________________________________________

Lessons

What have you learned this year? About yourself? About others or the world? What do you want to repeat? Do more of? Less of? What worked? What didn’t? Why? What lessons do you wish to take from this past year?

____________________________________________________________________

Giving and Balance

Where did you give the most of yourself this year? Are you happy with where you put the share of your time, energy and attention? Are there areas where you wish you had invested more? Where do you wish you had given less? Where do you wish you had given more support? Where do you, on reflection, think you could have got more support? What are three ways you would like to balance your time or energy distribution differently in the New Year?

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Highlights

What were the best feeling moments this year? What are the highlights you will remember for life? Who and what made them special and why? What three words sum up this year for you personally?

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Taking time out of the hamster wheel frenzy of doing, to pause and reflect is so important.

Effective change and growth comes from awareness of what’s working for us and what is not.

If we wish for a better tomorrow it is best built on the foundations of the lessons of today.

I hope you can take a little time to just be this holiday season, and reflect on a good year well-lived and to build some anticipation for the brand shiny new one that is about to open up!

Tags 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, achievement, being present, New Years Resolutions, summer, Take Responsibility

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Reflect and Recommit

Whoa…middle of May already?! 2019 is whizzing by.

Moving towards mid-year, it’s an excellent time to check in on how your year is going.

Here are a few handy review questions to get you thinking:

What are you most proud of so far in 2019?

What New Year’s Resolutions did you set this year?

Which ones have you achieved? Why have you achieved them? How did you accomplish them?

Which ones are nicely on track? Why are they going so well? What is it that you are doing that is keeping them on track?

Which ones have, ahem, fallen by the wayside? Why is that, honestly? What did you prioritise instead? Are you good with that choice?

Do you still want to achieve that thing? Is it still important to you?

Is there something else you would like to create for yourself in 2019?

We are very good at waiting till Monday to restart the healthy eating plan, waiting till the first of the month to reset our spending, and waiting till the 1^st of the year to set our big goals for our lives. Doesn’t have to be that way.

We can reset ourselves any time we choose.

We can start on a brand new adventure, goal or splendid plan at 4.34pm on a random Wednesday (TODAY!) in May if we choose to make it so. Every day is an opportunity to remake ourselves. To take a moment to look up from the hamster wheel of doing that is life and see in what overall direction we are headed. If all the tiny little decisions and choices we are making each day about how to prioritise our time, energy and attention are actually taking us in the direction, on the 1^st of January, that we fully intended to go.

Now is the time as we hunker down to winter to reassess. See what has worked. Give ourselves a pat on the back where appropriate and double down on what we still want to move towards. Keeping up momentum as it gets colder and darker with that extra show of motivation to push through is vital. It is so much easier to commit to healthier eating, more exercise and so on when the sun is shining, fruit is falling off the trees in the garden and the nights are long.

So, what is the #1 thing you want to accomplish by the end of the year? What would make 2019 stand out as the year you always look back on? That you finally went to that amazing place you had on your bucket list or started that study programme that transformed your professional opportunities, set up your side hustle business, ran that off-road marathon, lost the 15kgs and kept it off.

Small tiny actions lead to huge long-term accomplishments.

It’s a general principle of how the human brain works that we tend to wildly overestimate what we can accomplish in a day (those To Do list’s that seem so doable at 8am but are almost unchanged at 4pm) and conversely also tend to habitually underestimate what we can accomplish in the long term. We can make so many more things that we think are too big or too time consuming to start, actually happen, if we just start small, but start.

The year is yet young. Reflect and recommit.

If you liked this blog, you will lovelovelove my Coaching Academy.

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Create a life you love, and a body you love living in and enjoy wellbeing without the overwhelm – just click here to waitlist and I’ll let you know the moment the doors are open for new members!

Tags 2019, achievement, Goalsetting, New Years Resolutions, positive thinking

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Waste NOT Waist.

This month I’ve been working with the members of my coaching Academy ~Wellbeing Warriors~ on the trusty topic of how to start the year with purpose! Specifically how to turn wishes from a good-natured intention in January, to something that is just a non-negotiable part of their life come December.

One of the things that so many women (and quite a few men) suffer from is over-eating. Having a big lunch as a pick me up during the day to compensate for a tricky meeting, or to delay going back to the office. Overeating on the kid’s leftovers so they don’t “go to waste” (except they DO: they go directly to YOUR waist. Whoa.). Treating yourself to a cold crisp Sauv (or four) as a treat after a hellish day or a horrendous commute. Mindlessly chowing through half a packet of cheese and biccies in-front of Netflix doing the double screen thing on Instagram then hiding the packet. Overeating. It’s huge.

In a way, it’s a good problem to have. We are supremely fortunate to live in a country where the vast majority have an abundance of food to eat. However, we eat when we are not hungry, we overeat when we are full, and we often use food not as fuel but as entertainment or reward, and that’s a problem.

If this is ringing bells then changing your mindset around this alone would set your 2019 on fire: imagine creating freedom around food and eating just when you are physically hungry?

Here’s the thing.

When you are using food, not as fuel, but as either a reward or as entertainment, you are asking your stomach to solve a problem it can never solve.

If you are bored or unhappy or stressed, it’s a job for your brain.

The fact is, you need to talk to your disruptive peer/boss/staff about that tricky meeting and reset some expectations. If your job is boring you then take a training course, ask for more responsibility or take steps to find a new one.

Or you need to cook less or buy some storage for leftovers and get smart at batching meals.

Or you need to genuinely search for a new job with a better commute or negotiate some flexitime.

Or you need to call a friend/take up surfing/train your pet aardvark to whistle if you are bored.

Your stomach cannot ever, evvvvvverrrrrrrrrrrrr, solve any of those problems.

They are the job of your brain.

Putting food you don’t require IN your mouth as a substitute for the right, empowered words coming OUT of your mouth will never fix the problem.

It merely perpetuates the dispiriting cycle of overeating. To solve it, you don’t need another expensive diet to eat up: you need to marshall your inner resources, get to the core of it and speak up.

PS: If this is ringing bells for you and you want more support – dive IMMEDIATELY into the Food & Freedom module within the Academy, get the tools you need and start taking control back today: Join Wellbeing Warriors now.

Tags achievement, New Years Resolutions, positive thinking, weight loss

Dream and Goals Live Happy Inspiration Positive Thought Strategy

When Goal Setting: Face Forwards.

Post author By Support Elf
Post date January 15, 2019
No Comments on When Goal Setting: Face Forwards.

Here’s the thing with setting goals. Most people seem to set goals based on what they don’t want to get. Which I know makes a certain kind of sense. If you have had an experience of something you really don’t want to go through again or continue to live with, it naturally shapes what you want to avoid in the future.

You don’t want to weigh 20kgs more than your natural body weight. You don’t want to continually work late. You don’t want a partner who takes you for granted. You don’t want to live a 90-minute commute from work.

It all makes a lot of sense and dwelling on these don’ts is easy to do. After all, we have a richer sensory experience to draw on of what we have or had rather than what we have not yet experienced but would like to. We know exactly how it feels to live in a body that feels too heavy rather than one that feels just right. We know precisely how it is to crawl in the traffic for hours on end rather than working from home with the dog curled up under our desk.

Our attention gravitates to what we know we don’t want, even though we want something different.

This is not a great way to goal set because our dream of a different future becomes defined by escaping the past. The goal is detailed with one eye firmly in the rear view mirror exclaiming, “Hell no, I don’t want any more of THAT!”. Our vision of tomorrow is laid on a foundation of evading a less than stellar yesterday.

When we create goals focused backwards like that we split our energy and focus between past and future without even realising it.

A subtle but powerful shift is to just define what you want and focus all your attention and energy on it. Give full focus to the way you want to go. How will it feel when you have it? How will you get there? What are the 3 next actions you can take to move towards it? Who could help you or join you on your journey? How will you celebrate or is it reward enough in itself? What resources would support you? Full attention on where you are going.

In short: Face Forwards.

We go where we are looking. You know that yourself from tripping when distracted looking down at your phone, or veering towards the rumble strip as you look out to sea. We are naturally pulled in the direction of our focus. So it makes sense, when there is something that we really want to achieve, to not split that focus into past and future but to keep our eye firmly on the prize ahead.

When we only keep half our attention on where we are going we are slower and we make more mistakes. We are more easily distracted. Our goal is far more likely to fail. When we fully face forwards we can see the bumps in the road earlier and avoid them. We can make smart detours and adjustments. We enjoy the journey far more, and it’s usually a LOT faster.

You don’t need to define your future by escaping your past. You don’t need to marinate in what went wrong, where others let you down or you let yourself down.

You can just define what you want now and move with commitment towards it. Decide you will make it so in 2019.

Turn your face towards the sun. Face Forwards.

If you liked this blog, you will lovelovelove my Coaching Academy.

Smart, practical tools that you can download, put into practice and get support and accountability as you up-level your wellbeing in an amazing community of like-minded women. Create a life you love, and a body you love living in and enjoy wellbeing without the overwhelm – just click here to join and I’ll see you inside!

Tags 2019, achievement, challenging beliefs, flexible thinking, Goalsetting, New Years Resolutions, positive thinking

Dream and Goals Live Happy Inspiration Positive Thought Strategy Self Care and Self Love

19 ways to set your 2019 on FIRE!

Post author By Support Elf
Post date January 8, 2019
No Comments on 19 ways to set your 2019 on FIRE!

One of the greatest feelings is slipping into bed with fresh, clean, crisp new sheets. And, so it is with the clean sheet of a new year. A whole 365 days where we get to do better. Be better. Feel better. We can deliberately start afresh and draw a line under what’s been. Consign ignominious failures to the past! Stride out confidently into a new year unsullied by previous baggage! That new year crisp clean sheet feeling is hard to beat.

I thought I would create a series for you to implement this year; 19 strategies to set your 2019 on fire. One a week to ponder, to implement, to integrate. So we get to Easter feeling progress has been made, and things have most definitely been done. Layering progress up each week in a gradual rising tide of wellbeing, rather than self-starting 25-well-intentioned resolutions that have all fallen over by Anniversary weekend!

The process of expansion is part of the human condition, to want to be content but still have that desire to expand, progress, reach for more. And the fact of the matter, is we fall into a really common trap, especially at this time of year. We want different, we really do, but we approach getting it in the same way that we have failed to get it in the past. We start the same diet or exercise or meditation routine with familiar high hopes only to have it fizzle out just like last year. And the year before.

The thing is, if you want different, you gotta do different! And to do different you have to think different. And to think different – that takes new strategies being applied with consistency. It’s choosing the new path over the default, which is easy when there is that rush of new year enthusiasm and we are all rested and relaxed at the bach, but is considerably more challenging when we are back in the routine of the 9 to 5 and the pick ups and early starts and it’s raining and we can’t get a park.

So, we are going to step through 19 strategies together that will stretch and challenge you in 2019 – but not so much that you don’t have time to put them in place. Small but powerful steps forward. Each week we will layer them up so you can implement them as we go. It might be something to do. Something to think. Something to say. Feel free to buy yourself a journal to accompany the series where you can make notes or track your progress. If you ask me nicely I will also make the series into a downloadable e-book for you at the end so you have it for easy reference. Am I good to you or what?!

One final note before we kick off 19 ways to set your 2019 on fire in mind, body and spirit: if your media feed is anything like mine it’s already crammed with ads trilling “New Year! New You!” I’d just like to say for the record: you absolutely don’t need a “new you”. The you you are is perfectly imperfect just as you are. Committing to an evolving you? Fantastic. A you expanding with personal growth and insight? Bring it on. You, actively creating more health and happiness? Yell to the yes. An expanding, evolving you: I am absolutely down with that. But a “new you”. I don’t buy into that at all. It is heavy with the implication that you now, the “old you” is somehow broken, and I don’t dig that in anyway. We are all the sum of what’s past, and we start from where we are with what we have. We are all works in progress that continue to evolve, and anyone who implies you are broken in some way is doing you a disservice and/or trying to sell you something you probably don’t need by cunningly triggering the “not good enough” hot button. Step away and step forwards instead. The you you are is imperfectly perfect and ready for more: which is exactly how it should be.

Bring on 2019: I have a feeling it’s going to be a great one.

If you liked this blog, you will lovelovelove my Coaching Academy.

Smart, practical tools that you can download, put into practice and get support and accountability as you up-level your wellbeing in an amazing community of like-minded women. Create a life you love, and a body you love living in and enjoy wellbeing without the overwhelm – just click here to join and I’ll see you inside!

Tags achievement, challenging beliefs, flexible thinking, Goalsetting, New Years Resolutions

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Why you don’t need a ‘New You’

Post author By Support Elf
Post date January 2, 2018
No Comments on Why you don’t need a ‘New You’

“Happy New Year! Happy New You!”

How many headlines will you see screaming that this month? Too many to count, I suspect.

I am going to be really subversive here (I know, I’m such a rebel) and kick off the first column of the New Year with a directly contradictory premise: You don’t need a “New You”.

The “You” you are is absolutely perfect in your imperfection. Anyone who tells you you are broken in some way is undermining your personal sovereignty. Especially anyone who tells you you are broken in order to sell something. You are not broken! You are whole and complete. Life and self-improvement is a PROCESS. A process means it’s ongoing. It doesn’t end until you do. It is never complete. Life is always in a state of beautiful incompletion.

Because you, you dear reader, are enough. Make your resolutions something that make your soul sing, not fill you with an increasing creeping feeling of dread. Resolve toward what makes you grow, not what you want to fix.

Resolve to laugh more in 2019.
Resolve to love more in 2019.
Resolve to smell the roses more in 2019.
Resolve to connect more in 2019.
Resolve to speak kindly to yourself, with love and compassion, in 2019.
Resolve to strive for progress not for perfection in 2019.
Resolve to honour your body and soul in 2019.
Resolve never to stop growing, learning and expanding in 2019.
Resolve to be all that you can be, the happiest version of yourself in 2019.

That’s what I wish for you. You are not broken. You never were. Embrace the glorious mess of all that you are and the beauty this year is going to unfold at your feet.

Happy New Year!

Tags challenging beliefs, enjoyment, flexible thinking, Goalsetting, New Years Resolutions, success

Dream and Goals Live Happy Inspiration

What is at the heart of your resolution? Is it Resolve? – Part 3

Post author By Support Elf
Post date January 16, 2017
No Comments on What is at the heart of your resolution? Is it Resolve? – Part 3

Another part of our discussion on New Year’s Resolutions this week. I hope yours are coming along a treat! If not, I hope there is something here to inspire you to make that change you desire stick this year.

I want to start by looking at the language of the word ‘resolution’ itself.

New Year’s Resolution is a term that has become shared code for “this thing I do in January that I sorta kinda know won’t really last but I get really excited about for at least the first 4 days, then I just feel guilty and hope no one asks me about it”.

New Year’s resolutions have become a kind of collective joke we are all in on. We all go through the motions of discussing them together, and they sell a zillion magazines screaming about the “New Year! New You!” However, we start a resolution with the “oh well – at least you tried!” ringing in our ears almost before we start! No wonder the majority of resolutions fail at the first hurdle – our definition of resolution has become a communal byword for temporary intention.

Resolution is actually so much more than that.

Resolution means “the process of resolving a problem”.

It’s about being really honest and saying I have a problem that’s gone on for long enough – and I want a final resolution to it. It’s determination; a steadfastness; a firm choice. It’s putting a stake in the ground – this is a problem for me: I don’t want to live with it anymore: I am resolving it. It’s not about being interested in solving the problem. Or I kinda would like to have it go away. Or a want or a desire to have the problem solved, a “like to have”. It’s about resolving it will be so.

A resolution will fail unless it has true resolve at its core.

Resolve means doing whatever it takes. Resolve means re-prioritising. Resolve means change even if it’s uncomfortable. Resolve means saying no to something. Resolve means saying yes to something else. Resolve means This. Is. Happening. And I will make the rest of my life flow around it.

At the end of the day, the reason most New Year’s resolutions fade to grey within the first weeks or months is not that we don’t really, really want those things – but – that we intend and are interested in them happening more than we are absolutely resolved that they will occur. Essentially most New Year’s Resolutions are actually New Year’s Intentions in disguise.

An intention is easy to continue if the way ahead is clear and the sailing is smooth, but when the seas of life get stormy, you need that steely inner resolve to overcome bailing out when life gets busy. It is resolve that will keep going no matter what. It is true resolve that determines if you reach your destination come what may.

What’s at the heart of your resolution is mission critical. Is it a “like to have”, “interested in having” or is it true resolve? It’s a fundamental quality to know – the success of your resolution depends on it.

So, if your resolution has already slid quietly away, consider that perhaps it was not a resolution at all but an intention. That’s okay. It doesn’t have to be New Year’s Day for you to recommit – you can do it this very day. Start now. Resolve. Make it so.

Tags Goalsetting, New Years Resolutions, Resolve

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