In case you don’t know about my obsession with endings – here goes. I believe healthy endings create new beginnings. Life can throw so many endings at us, jobs, careers, loss of people or pets we have loved, the end of relationships or life stages and the end of who we think we are.
At the start of a new year, it is traditional to make resolutions and to plan for the year ahead; but promises to ourselves without insight, will be quickly broken.
If we focus on how we ended last year and learn from it – both from what worked well and what was a horrible mistake, or just went plain wrong – then we might make it to Spring with good intentions intact
So, the first step is to reflect. Cold weather days are perfect for this, curling up with a mug of something warm and a blank journal. Don’t judge, just write, what worked well? Think about what gave you energy? What were you proud of, even if no one acknowledged it or noticed. What did you like about yourself? Who or what did you love last year? Notice the patterns of the people, environments, and things you were doing that gave you energy and helped you to thrive.
Now, what didn’t work so well? What was your role in that? What does this tell you about yourself that is useful? (labelling yourself as something negative isn’t useful). Try completing the sentence ‘Last year would have been even better if…’.
The important thing is radical honesty. Unfortunately lying to ourselves is a very human thing. To give yourself the best chance this year, the first step is to be radically honest about what you do and don’t want and what you are or aren’t prepared to do to get the thing you want. Acting in line with your values and purpose will make sustaining any goal you choose much easier. Most goals require We make promises about getting fitter, thinner, stopping drinking, smoking or acting in self destructive ways without understanding the true motivation, or what needs to end to achieve that goal. Then we get disappointed, dispirited or angry when we fail. Getting thinner, for example, isn’t just about eating less and moving more – we all know that, and yet don’t. Too often the goal is driven by self-loathing not self-love or care. Understanding and ending our unhealthy relationship to food to create a positive and nourishing one; motivated by a desire to feel more comfortable in our own skin at a healthy body weight, is likely to yield better results. The thing is, it’s complicated, and everyone is different. Which is why we need to find our own way AND surround ourselves with people who support our goals or at least won’t sabotage us.
When we understand what worked, we can do more of it and build on our strengths rather than keep battling away with our weaknesses. In my field we call this strengths-based psychology and it is definitely worth reading about. Building small changes in habit and rewarding yourself (with anything except food or booze), can yield lasting results. There are also some great books for changing habits or thinking differently for the year ahead – I like Atomic Habits by James Clear and Mind over money by Claudia Hammond.
