There are usually two perspectives on how to approach the new year. Some women enjoy setting goals and intentions for the year ahead. Other women prefer not to create any major goals outside of their usual goals. Both types of personalities could benefit by reflecting and redefining what you do want in your life. Take a look and see what could help you!
1. Re-asses Your Life
Take the New Year as an opportunity to re-assess how the year has gone so that you can become more clear and intentional actionable steps.
Here are questions to ask yourself:
Where did I do well?
Where did I fall short?
What could I do better on moving forward?
What was an unexpected challenge?
In what ways did I experience growth?
2. Clearly Define What You Intend To Achieve
After some reflection and defining what you intend to accomplish. You reverse engineer how to determine what is the first small step you need to take.
Example: Intention- Be an early riser and focus on healthy habits.
First Step: Set the alarm
Second Step: Drink lemon water while you journal.
Third Step: Exercise
Now your day starts as usual, shower, get ready etc.
3. Learn to Slow Down Before You Speed Up
This one can be challenging because it may seem counterintuitive. When you are trying to accomplish the most, why would you slow down? Let me explain.
When trying to accomplish something or you have a lot to do, you may feel the need to rush and or stress on what needs to be done. Usually, when stress is triggered, you may become more emotionally distressed, which directly impacts what you are doing. You may become forgetful, make more mistakes, lose something, etc.
It’s best to slow down, whether it be for minutes or hours take an inventory of what is needed to execute something to the best of your ability. Then break down into smaller doable tasks. Now you ramp up to work quickly, but efficiently.
4. Find Support and Delegate
It is vital when assessing your situation or what you intend to do to see where you need support. Seeking support can accelerate your progress toward your goals instead of doing it alone. This is also an opportunity to delegate and hand off what is best done by others.
For example, if building a website takes an absorbent amount of time and time is best used creating, then this would be a perfect opportunity to delegate or find support to move through areas of struggle quickly.
5. Identify Where Time Is Spent
In today’s life there is so much distraction that most of us, if not all of us are impacted. It is easy to check work e-mail and stumble upon Instagram and TikTok. The ease of distraction is in our hands and in our faces all day. I often hear, “I don’t even realize how long I was scrolling for.” Avoidance and distraction are easy to feed with technology.
The best way to combat this distraction, which ultimately impacts your concentration and productivity, is to set limits. Setting limits look different for everyone, but if you know where excessive time is lost then that is where you want to set a limit.
This limit could be you setting a manual time on your phone or Alexa, and once it goes off, you know you are done. There are apps such as Opal that help you set limits. iPhones have time limits as well that remind you. Time is up. For others, they may need to remove apps altogether and only access them on purpose on a computer.
Distraction and avoidance come in many forms such a tv, shopping, going out, etc. This is an area that needs regular maintenance and reassessment.
Becoming the woman you want to be is an ongoing journey. I often say I will always be a lifelong learner because there is always room for growth. Different seasons of life require different aspects of us. What may be your focus and intention this year may be completely different the next year. This is what growth requires of us. There is value and peace in having clarity with what you hope to do and what you intend to accomplish.