Skills for the New Year
Love to set New Years resolutions but find that you’re already off course by February 1st? Let’s trouble shoot that goal and ensure that it’s SMART!
Creating with SMART in mind increases our likelihood of being successful as it focuses on our goal on being:
Specific: Is my goal precise and not in vague terms? What are the steps? How can I get started?
Measurable: How will I know if I’ve met my goal or made progress towards it? Is there a clear metric I can use to be objective?
Attainable: Is this goal possible? Is it realistic based on where I am now and with my resources?
Relevant: Is this goal purposeful to my overall values? How is this goal supporting my big picture?
Timely: Can this goal be met or sustained for a year? If a year is overwhelming, can I break down this resolution into monthly goals?
Examples of making our resolutions SMART:
Before: “I want to drink more water.”
After SMART: “I want to drink 5 glasses of water a day and I’ll track it on my to-do app.”
Before: “I want to lose some weight.”
After: “I want to lose 1 pound a month by exercising 3 times a week, eating at least 1 vegetable a day, and reduce snacking every night to every other night.”
Before: “I want to stop thinking negative thoughts.”
After: “I want to reduce negative thinking by doing gratitude twice a day and practicing self compassion when I become aware of negative thoughts once a day.”
So what’s the hype with gratitude? Especially with the release of Big Mouth Season 4, you’ve probably been hearing all about why you should do gratitude. But does it actually do anything? How does it work?
In countless studies, gratitude is continually shown to have a positive impact on our mental well being. Although we can spend a good chunk of our day thinking about what we don’t have, need to get, have to achieve, want to do, using gratitude even once a day provides our brain with a small shift in being able to recognize and honor the things in our lives that are going right, going well, or even just OK. Overtime, this shift gives our brain the ability to more easily focus on the positives and neutrals in our lives, rather than on negatives or deficits. It reprograms our brain to view our life and our outlook of the world with a wider, more hopeful lens.
How do you do it? Focus on the small stuff! It’s easy to feel disconnected from gratitude when we think about the big things (e.g. air). But focusing on the small stuff helps us really put ourselves right in the sensation of that thing we’re grateful for. Like focusing on our morning coffee, how warm it was, how it had the perfect amount of cream, how wonderful it smelled. Or focusing on the contented feeling of having your phone fully charged! Or as simple as being grateful for that toilet paper in the bathroom. We know how bad it would suck if it didn’t exist!
If you run out of ideas- here are some more in this picture! Feel free to give them a try and do one a day 🙂
One of the most common things I get asked about is mom guilt. Yes- it’s super real. No- it’s not completely avoidable. And yes-you can reduce how it impacts you in 2021!
Comparing ourselves to things we see on social media is often one of the biggest producers of mom guilt. Scrolling past smiling faces, adorably well behaved children, and moms that “have it all together” sometimes lead us to thinking we’re the ones doing something wrong. If you find that your feed is full of posts that make you feel exhausted, guilty, or like we’re failing, AND we don’t want to stop following the people we love, try creating a new and separate account: an empowerment profile. By creating a second instagram (or social media of choice), you get to keep all your friends, family, and fav celebrities in one place, while curating a sacred and up lifting space that you can toggle to when you need a good cleanse, some validation, or whatever the internet version of a hug is.
Need some ideas of who to follow in your empowerment profile? Follow people who:
Are like you: Do you have a full-time nanny, a part time job, and are married to an NFL wide receiver? No? Then why compare your life and ability to parent to hers? Follow other moms who are in similar situations, have similar values and goals, or are working with the same resources.
Keep it real: Most of our friends aren’t posting the pictures of their son while he throws food all over her lap. Our colleagues aren’t posting about chafed nipples from latching issues. It doesn’t mean they don’t have these struggles but we start to feel like maybe we’re the only ones. Sometimes it can be helpful to follow people who show the struggle and validate that someone else is going through it too!
Keep it balanced: Misery loves company and sometimes it’s easy to get sucked into over- identifying with what makes us sad and others who are living through it. Try to follow people who are showing the “keep it real” stuff, while not only focusing on the negative. The goal is to find someone who shared “warts and all,” not “and all warts.”
Offer ideas/ resources: Sometimes when we’re going through something tough, it’s great to see what others are doing to get through it. Check in with yourself though if this begins to feel overwhelming or produces guilt that we aren’t doing enough 🙂
Put things in perspective: Laughter is often exactly what the doctor prescribed so never under- estimate the power of a good meme! Seeing our situation with some comedy can help us shift perspective.
Empower/ inspire: Last, but not least, follow some people who post messages and affirmations that make you hopeful, give you strength, provide peace, and remind you that you’re doing a good job!
Need some ideas or want to share some? I’ve tagged my favorite follows on this picture on Instagram. Join me there and share yours!
