New Year Strategy
How to make 2019 your best year ever
Forget making resolutions this year. If you want to set yourself some serious life goals and achieve them, you need a strategy, and as the GQ Therapist I was asked what my top three tips were – so of course I wanted to share them with you here too…
I’ve never liked New Year’s resolutions – I always think they feel a little constricting. Deciding to do something every day for 365 days no matter what can feel a little overwhelming, so it’s always good to learn to live life just one day at a time. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to smash your goals and change old habits, but it’s the way you go about it that matters. Saying to yourself you will only eat protein and salad every day for lunch might sound angelic, but what happens in the deep winter when it’s pouring with rain and your boss just told you your last presentation was terrible? See my point?
So instead of resolutions, let’s look at strategy; it feels more powerful and therefore more empowering to execute. Strategies for getting what you want, feeling how you want to feel and living the life you love matter. So I want to share the only three tips you will really need for making 2019 your year.
Get focused
Whether it’s fatigue, distractions, lack of motivation or something else entirely, our inability to focus digs a hole in our productivity and therefore can jeopardise our chances of success. Getting focused is therefore the key to unlocking your full potential. There are many ways to help you focus: exercise in the morning to get the blood moving around your body and ready for the day ahead; meditation to slow the mind and teach it how to focus up; working offline so that you don’t always have emails popping up to distract you or suddenly slide over to YouTube because you can. The brain is a mental muscle and some studies have found that people who are easily distracted benefit from “brain-training” exercises. Make sleep a priority: good sleep creates good days. Take breaks – short ones and often. Even a quick five-minute walk can create the space your brain needs to focus up when you’re back to it. Simple but oh-so effective.
Get empowered
We live in a culture and society that is constantly streaming images of perfection everywhere we go. It is being shown to us as if it is real. We are all constantly bombarded with things that we are made to think are imperative to have, important to purchase, and then, of course, your life will change and everything will fall into place. The first step to empowerment is to step back and see what’s happening around you – that, actually, you’re surrounded by millions of pounds of marketing that is constantly trying to trick you to feel disempowered so that you buy whatever it is they are showing you with the false dream of then you will be good enough. Being aware of this is amazing, because you then get yourself back in the game. The truth about empowerment is that it doesn’t come from anywhere other than you and your mind. It comes from thinking right, having the right mindset and the ability to make your brain work for you, not against you.Get your shit together
Taking a moment to decide how you want to live matters. Taking a moment to decide who you want to be, how you want to feel and act is imperative if you want to step into 2019 with your shit together. You can’t have your shit together if your mind is off. Getting it together is really about growing up and becoming an adult. Children don’t have their shit together. They are chaotic bundles of confusion, stumbling wide-eyed through the world, motivated by pleasure and unquestionably following their whims. As adults we have to grow up and learn to take responsibility for ourselves, mainly our minds. You have to learn to ”think right”. This means learning to get conscious of what you are thinking in order to create the right feelings, actions and results. Getting your shit together means getting rid of any toxicity in your life, having an open mind and an open heart. It means choosing to live for you, the real you and to take care of you.
You don’t have to do any of this alone. You know where to find me.
Read the full GQ article here