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Following Through on Your 2015 New Year’s Resolution: 7 Steps to Becoming a More Positive Person in 2015

 

It’s that time of year again.

You’re wondering what to pick as your New Year’s resolution for 2015. You want to pick something that will enrich your life, and perhaps most importantly, something on which you’ll actually follow-through this time!

You Make The Choice

“Attitude is everything.” Every single day you make a choice. What are you choosing to focus on? You can spend most of your energy noticing the barriers in your path, or you can choose to spend your time and energy focusing on what you want, possibilities, joy and abundance. The choice is yours to make.

The single most important resolution one can make in life is one which I’ve helped many of my clients tackle, one on which I’ve also focused in my own life as well.

This year, I invite you to make your 2015 New Year’s Resolution to

***Build up my positive thinking muscles and

learn how to quickly release unhelpful negative thoughts.***

If you haven’t yet decided what your 2015 resolution is going to be, here are 3 reasons why this is the New Year’s resolution to choose:

  1. The benefits of doing this will spread into every area of your life, making it one of the most worthwhile resolutions you can choose. Today there is an abundance of research showing the positive physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational effects of positive thinking. Your body, your mind, your clients, your boss, and especially your loved ones – will all thank you for becoming a more positive person.
  2. Taking control of your life by taking control of what you spend your time thinking about is absolutely possible! Ever hear the phrase “mind over matter?” The truth is that what we think about plays a large role in creating our reality.
  3. Anyone can do it. Regardless of life circumstance, YOU can do it. You don’t need any money. You don’t need a mansion or your own gym equipment. All you need is a few minutes every day, and these can even be minutes you’re already spending in the shower, on your commute, or on your walk to the store.

Although you may find this to be one of the more challenging resolutions to set, you can follow the 7 steps below to ensure that 2015 will be the year you stick to your New Year’s resolution, the year you learn how to choose and attract positivity, hope, inspiration, beauty, fun, and vitality!

I’ve found following these 7 steps to be most helpful for clients of mine who have set out to live happier, more upbeat lives:

Step 1: Make the choice and set a clear goal. We achieve what we set out to achieve. So it’s important to be specific about what exactly you want. Do you want to think more positive thoughts than negative thoughts? Do you want to feel confident and let go of old thinking patterns that contributed to low self-esteem? Do you want to leave work at the office and stop bringing stress home with you? Whatever it is you want, name it. See if you can’t make it something that passes the Mt. Everest test too – just like if your goal were to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest, put your goal into terms which will allow you to a) imagine what it will be like to reach it, and b) know when you’ve reached it.

The other important point here is to acknowledge that you’re making a choice. And you’re the only one who can make it. If you don’t take the reins on this, no one else will. If you don’t put in the work, no one else will. It’s a choice you’ll be making day in and day out.

Be sure to write your goal down and put it somewhere you’ll see it every day. (The bathroom mirror is a favorite choice for many of my clients.)

Step 2: Visualize the end. Even though this step is often the easiest and most enjoyable, this step is absolutely crucial! Being able to see and feel what your life will be like if you keep your resolution and reach your goal will be something that will sustain you all year. Runners visualize crossing the finish line and hold onto that vision while they run over each of the hills of their marathons. It works! It helps you stay focused on why reaching your goal is worth it for you. So take a few moments, close your eyes if you’d like, and imagine what your life will be like when you’ve mastered the art of positive thinking.

To really use the full power of visualization, imagine what you’ll feel like once you’ve accomplished your goal. See if you can’t even feel right now how you imagine you’ll feel then, as if the change has already happened. Imagine what you’ll be doing, what you’ll be saying, who you’ll be spending time with… How amazing would it be to have hope, to feel confident, to look forward to tomorrow regardless of whether it’s a work day, a weekend, or you’re on vacation. Just imagine!

While some of you might chuckle at this suggestion, it really does help to literally draw a picture, or at least write it out.

Step 3: Take stock of where you are now. Scan through your day or your week and think about some of most frequently recurring thoughts you’ve had about work, money, your home, family, friends, your business partner or significant other, your body, your education, things you’d like to do or have to do, or decisions you’ve made in the past. The thoughts that come to mind as you do this scan might be those that come to you most frequently when you first wake up in the morning, as you’re trying to fall asleep, or at the end of the weekend. As you think of them, try to sort them into positive and negative thoughts, with any self-critical, judgmental, regretful, sad, anxious, or angry thoughts going on one sheet of paper and any confident, optimistic, excited, fun, happy, loving, generous thoughts on an entirely separate sheet of paper.

If you imagine putting your lists onto either side of a scale and your negative thoughts outweigh your positive thoughts, then this is the resolution for you! You’re on the right track. And now that you’re setting this as your intention, things can only get better from here!

*It’s important to limit this exercise to just about 5 minutes tops since thinking of the most common negative thoughts that cross your mind can quickly get you feeling pretty negative and might even push you off track altogether. So, just do enough to get yourself started and then cut it off at 5 minutes. You’ll quickly see the point.

Step 4: Make a plan to develop a new habit. This can be the most challenging step in reaching any goal. All those resolutions you didn’t meet in years past didn’t make the cut because you hadn’t yet changed your habits. So, as you make your plan, be strategic. Think about what it will actually take to reach your goal. Life not going the way we want it to is not the only reason we get into a trap of negativity. More often than not the single biggest reason we keep feeling stressed out, angry, hopeless, anxious, or sad year after year is that we’re in the habit of feeling those ways.

Spend a few minutes reflecting on these questions to find clues about what it will take for you to choose more of the thoughts you want:

  • When has maintaining a positive outlook felt easier for you? What elements of your life in those moments can you easily replicate?
  • What have you noticed helps stop your mind from spinning into negativity?

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Then, as you create your plan, think about what it will really take for YOU to create a new habit and begin to think more positively. The plans I develop with my clients often include things like:

  • Start a morning/evening gratitude practice. Start small by thinking of 1 thing for which you’re truly grateful each morning. You can do this during your morning shower or as you pour your morning coffee. Gratitude is a quick way to shift from negative thinking to positive thinking; that’s why everyone’s doing it these days!
  • Create a container into which you’ll place any negative thought that comes to mind. You may decide to use an old tissue box as your negative thought “trash can.” Anytime a negative thought comes up, you can acknowledge it, write it down, and then release it by putting it to the side into its container. ***It’s important to note, the goal of positive thinking is not to ignore or deny your negative thoughts. Rather, the aim is to learn how to keep negative thoughts from controlling your life.
  • Fill your mind with positive thoughts. You may even decide to make a game of it. You might challenge yourself to see how many positive thoughts you can come up with during your morning commute. You may decide you need a partner to keep you on task who can start an email thread with you in which you two volley positive thoughts back and forth to each other throughout the week.
  • Set aside time to laugh and smile. If babies do it for you, go hang out with some. If animals are your thing, go hang in the dog park or take your own for a long walk. If you can’t get enough of Sarah Silverman, put watching her on YouTube onto your daily to do list. By setting your intention to laugh or smile each day, you’ll be building up your positivity muscles and training your eye and ear to look for more of the same.

These are just a few examples. I bet you can think of others that might work even better for you.

Once you’ve got your own unique plan, keep it simple and jot down 1 to 3 things you’re going to do every day to get into the habit of thinking positively.

Step 5: Take action. Now. Right now. Put down this blog post for a moment and think of one positive thing.

You’re going to choose a resolution you think will improve the quality of your life. You’re choosing to invest in YOU. There will be an exciting outcome you can already imagine. Those are three positive thoughts right there. And you’ve probably just come up with at least one more too.

The important thing here is to make sure you don’t stop at the planning stage. And don’t just say you’ll start tomorrow. It takes 5 seconds to take action on this resolution right now. So, think Nike and Just do it!

Step 6: Start tracking your progress right away. There’s nothing that derails a New Year’s resolution faster than making it on New Year’s eve and then watching January 10th roll around as you realize you haven’t taken one step towards it.

So see if you can create a simple document to track whether or not you did the 1 to 3 things you put in your plan to do every day. The easiest way to see progress is to measure it. And no matter what your New Year’s resolution is, you’ve chosen it because it’s not second nature yet, because it’s not something you’re doing every day yet. So track your efforts and watch them grow.

And then, as you see more and more check marks, celebrate!!! Your New Year’s resolution is your gift to you. Celebrating your progress reminds you of just how hard it was to get where you are, of just how important the decision felt when you made it. Celebrate the gift you’ve chosen to give yourself.

Step 7: Revise as necessary. Challenge yourself to stick with your plan, to stay committed to your New Year’s Resolution, and to look at the parts that remain difficult to see if you might need to try a new approach. A month or two into the new year be sure to also take a look for any elements of your plan that have become too easy, and challenge yourself to set your standards higher, to see if you can take your positive thinking to the next level. Whatever you do, don’t let the fact that you still have negative thoughts in March throw you off your track. Remember the choice you made, the conviction you had when you made it, and choose to stick with it in whatever modified form makes it most useful to you.

As you revise be sure to keep step 5 in mind. It’s not enough to plan or to revise, whether in its original or revised form, in order to reach your goal every plan needs action!

 

I wish you all a year you absolutely LOVE, a year filled with gratitude and an abundance of reasons to feel it!

 

*** Leave a comment! Whether you choose a similar New Year’s resolution to the one I’ve suggested or you apply the steps above to an entirely different resolution, let me know what you think of this post. I’d love your thoughts and feedback! And, of course, if you have additional tips to offer, please share them too!

 

Share this post with someone you think might enjoy it!

 


Wishing you a wonderful New Year!

~Becky

 

Becky Emet, MSW, MBA

Career Coach | Life Coach

Choose A Life You Love founder

 

New Year’s Resolution 2015 – Special Offer

***Offering a second coaching session FREE to all new clients who contact me by Sunday, January 4, 2015***

Do you want to find the career path that will finally feel fulfilling? Do you want to make sure you actually stick to your New Year’s Resolution this year? Do you want to take the steps you need to take in 2015 to create a life you absolutely LOVE?

Email me today to schedule a FREE coaching consultation to learn more about this special offer and to see whether coaching is right for you – info@ChooseALifeYouLove.com

 

The Five Most Important Signs You’re Living a Life You LOVE

You know that special *glow* Maya Angelou always had, the warmth of her smile that seemed always to be a full-body smile?

That’s the glow of living a life she truly loved. Hers was the glow of a woman who was living the life she was meant to live, living in her own fullness, living in her strength and her gentleness, living in her joy and in her pain, sharing herself with others in her uniquely open and uncensored way, sharing her gifts with the world, and breathing in each moment as her true self…

If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone who wants to LOVE your life. You may even be someone who does love your life most of the time. You may not know how to tell exactly. Or you may know that although you love your life some days, in some moments it seems all too clear that your life just isn’t everything you want it to be.

In the blog post below I’ll share The Five Most Important Signs You’re Living a Life You LOVE. Look out for these signs in your own life. Get honest with yourself. You deserve a life you truly love. It’s worth it. So, take a minute or two, scan the signs below, and see what you find. It may feel like you’re taking a good long look in the mirror.

Before you read further and your mind gets cluttered with someone else’s ideas, I invite you to ask yourself: On the days when I am living a life I truly love, how can I tell? How would my best friend be able to tell? How would a stranger be able to tell?

When I work with my life coaching clients who have made the choice to live a life they LOVE, I ask them questions like: If you were living a life you truly loved each and every day, how would you wake up feeling? How would you feel going to sleep at night? When you looked in the mirror, what would be most noticeable?
Here are the top five signs I’ve seen in my coaching clients who have chosen to live lives they love, in the lives of my mentors and successful public figures, and in my own life as well.

The Five Most Important Signs You're Living A Life You LOVE

The Five Most Important Signs You’re Living A Life You LOVE

1. You notice that you wake up eager to start your day.

Picture this: Your eyes will just barely be starting to open, the alarm may be going off, and way before you’re convinced you’re really awake, the dog, or cat, or kiddo will jump into your arms to make sure that yes, you are in fact awake! Soon your brain will begin to think about your day, what you need to do, who needs what from you, how much time you have left to get ready. You’ll start to become aware of your body, you may feel like stretching or notice the first morning belly whispers that let you know you’ll be getting hungry soon. And here’s the part that’s different when you’re living a life you truly LOVE—you’ll notice that you feel energized, that you feel excited, that the vision you’re starting to imagine in your head of how your day will go is fun to imagine.

Whether you decide to jump out of bed or snuggle with a loved one for a few extra minutes, you’ll be doing so calmly, without self doubt or self judgment or a sense of needing to rush. Whether you wake up with an idea of what you’d like to do that day and feeling eager to get started, or you wake up knowing that the day will be more of an adventure that unfolds organically, you’ll feel pumped to fully participate in it. You won’t be wishing it was a different day of the week or wishing today wasn’t the day you had to do this or that. You won’t be feeling that heavy, pressure-filled feeling of needing to make the day perfect, or present a perfect self, or meet your boss’ or partner’s or child’s or parent’s expectations. When you wake up to a life you truly love, you’ll wake up feeling free, calm, whole, and energized!

2. You feel calm and fulfilled as you’re getting ready to fall asleep.

Imagine brushing your teeth, getting undressed, making your way over to the bed and pulling back the covers, and feeling a sense of satisfaction, like something is very *right.* As you climb into bed and begin to close your eyes, the daily replay will make you smile. You’ll remember moments from your day that felt like gifts. You’ll feel proud of a decision you made or the way you treated yourself or someone else. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment—even if your day was spent lying on the beach soaking in the sunshine—you’ll have a sense that the way you chose to spend your day fit into the bigger vision you have for your life.

You’ll end your day knowing that you did something meaningful, that you finished what you started, and that the way you’ll choose to spend your time the next day will be a natural extension of your choices and efforts and ideas of today. You won’t have this sense of having something hanging over you. You won’t be dreading tomorrow. You’ll have made choices today that send you off into sleep with confidence, clarity, serenity, and ease. When you’re living a life you truly love, there will be a calm you’ll feel at the end of your day that will make it easy for you to give your mind, body, and spirit a true rest. You’ll fall sleep looking forward to tomorrow.

3. You feel grateful throughout your day.

When you’re living a life you truly love, so many moments throughout your day will feel like gifts. At first you may be surprised how often you feel true gratitude. It may come up in the tiniest moments—tasting a favorite food, a quick kiss in the morning, a phone call to an old friend, the satisfaction you feel checking something off your to do list, making plans for an adventure, coming up with a new idea, getting a thank you note in the mail, how fresh the air feels as you breathe it in, how flexible your muscles and joints feel… You’ll find yourself noticing the miraculous nature of so much of your life.

You’ll have this awareness too that none of the moments of your life are guaranteed, that they’d just have easily not happened. You’ll see with greater clarity how your own choices have brought those treasured experiences into your life. You’ll know that you’re a player in your own sense of gratitude, that in large part it’s the wanting to feel grateful that allows you to truly appreciate so many gifts in your life.

You may find that you don’t feel thrilled about every single thing that happens just as soon as it happens. You may also find yourself working to change something, working to fight an injustice, devoting energy to changing your perspective on something, tending to a crisis that came up at home or at work… but what you’ll find is that those moments don’t outweigh the grateful nature of your spirit. Moments of which you aren’t the biggest fan at the start won’t distract you from noticing the many aspects of your life for which you’re truly grateful. You’ll have a sense that you have the tools to tackle any challenge, that you’re up to the task. You won’t be measuring the water in your glass, the time in your day, the energy you have to give everyone who seems to want it, wondering how close you are to empty. You’ll notice the glass being filled with more water than you could ever possibly use up, with more energy and blessings, with more love and connection, with more energy and resolve than you’ll ever need. Any feelings of scarcity will have transformed to become a simple and deep knowledge that you have an abundance of everything you really need in your life. In living a life you love, you’ll be looking for opportunities to give, to share all those things for which you’re most grateful with your loved ones and with the world.

4. You’re able to express yourself easily and openly.

You know those moments when you tell a story or a joke and the punch line comes out better than you could have ever planned it and you’ve got everyone around you roaring with laughter? Can you remember moments in your life when you were so convinced a new idea you had was truly great that the idea seemed to just get better and better every time you told someone about it? What about times when you’ve had something truly difficult you’ve needed to say, something that was going to be hard for someone to hear… Can you remember those times when you said the tough thing and it felt easier than you’d imagined, when you seemed to find exactly the right words to speak your truth in a way that felt like you were really taking care of your needs and also showing care to the other person at the same time?

There’s something really special that happens when you choose to live a life you truly love. Words don’t get caught in the back of your throat. You don’t find yourself wondering what you should or shouldn’t say. You don’t feel confused or unsure of yourself.

Instead, there’s an honesty with which you live your life that allows you to communicate effortlessly. When you’re in alignment, when your choices feel intentional, when you’re feeling energized and grateful, when you’re living your life with integrity, when you feel clear about how you want to live your life, there’s a way that expressing yourself becomes the easiest thing you’ve ever done. There’s a peace, a “rightness,” a sense of fullness. And you’re unafraid. You’ve found a way to be mindful and self-reflective. You’ve gotten real about what it is you really want from life. You’ve placed your highest priorities and values at the center of your life and you have no doubts about your decisions. There’s an openness that comes from that. You’ve won back that confidence in your own inner voice that you may have had as a young child, or perhaps you’ve developed even more as an adult. You’re fearless about sharing your truths, your perspectives, your ideas. And you’re aware of the tremendous gifts you give when you express your inner-most self so fully. This is what it feels like to so many who have chosen to live lives they truly love each and every day.

5. You feel like you’re able to be your true self, the full expression of who you are in every moment.

We all have different parts of who we are—You may be smart but also love to be silly. Or you’re determined but love to spend all day Sunday watching movies on the couch. You’re hard working but can’t wait another moment for that vacation in Hawaii. Perhaps, being a parent is the most important thing in your life, but sometimes you want time just with other adults. Or you’re the schmoozer your boss can always rely on in those sales meetings, but sometimes you just want to be the fly on the wall for a change and let someone else take the lead. You’re the one everyone goes to for strategy, and you can cry during a particularly good commercial… (the list goes on and on…)

Imagine showing all of those seemingly contradictory parts to your partner, you new boyfriend, your child, your teacher, your colleague, or your boss. Imagine what it would be like to feel comfortable being all of you. Imagine if you didn’t just feel okay doing that, but if you believed that by being so fully you, by being so open and honest about the colorfulness of your true personality, you were having a more positive impact on yourself and the people around you. Imagine if you believed that listening to your dreams, instead of setting them aside, was the key to you living a life you fully loved. Imagine being yourself without fear causing you to think about tucking some parts of you away and only letting them out in certain company. Imagine if you knew that being your full self was the only way for you to find true and lasting fulfillment. And imagine if you knew that by being your true self, in all ways, you would give more to this world than you would have ever dreamed.
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That is what living a life you truly love each and every day is like. It’s a life YOU love after all. It’s no one else’s. In a life you love, you know the things which make you unique are also your greatest gifts. You know that sharing the fullness of who you are with the world allows you to feel free and fully alive, and offer to the world gifts whose value lies beyond anyone’s imagination.

These are the five most important signs you are living a life you truly love that I’ve collected to this point. Some may ring more true for you than others. There are some signs that you might notice are missing from this list but which you know you’d include on your own.

Your signs may be different!!! I encourage you to think about what your signs are.
How would YOU be able to tell you were living a life you *truly* loved?

As you bring these images of you living a life you truly love to mind, can you *feel* it? Imagine what you feel like, the thoughts running through your mind in those moments, the way you’re breathing, the pace at which your heart beats… Just imagine!

Take a look at the worksheet below and see if it sparks any new ideas for you. And then, if you’d like to, please share your insights in the comments section by clicking on leave a reply at the top of this post so we can all benefit from adding to our growing list of signs to look out for.

I hope this little exercise and The Five Most Important Signs You’re Living a Life You LOVE have inspired you to figure out what your own unique signs are.

No one can live your life for you. No one can love your life for you. And no one can tell you exactly what a life you’d truly love each and every day would look like. Only you can do that.

The amazing thing is that YOU CAN DO IT! You can get clear on what it’d feel like for you to be living a life you truly loved. And then you can make the choice to go out and CHOOSE A LIFE YOU LOVE, each and every day!

Wishing you a life you truly love, today and every day!

~Becky

Don’t forget to share the signs you come up with in the comments section. We’d all love to add signs to the list so we can be on the search for those as well! Scroll to the top of the post to *leave a reply.*

If you’d like to live a life you love and you’re curious about what it takes to make that choice and make your dreams a reality, you can learn more at Choose A Life You Love coaching. I also offer complementary coaching consultations to everyone who makes a request!
***Email me at info@choosealifeyoulove.com to set up your complementary coaching consultation today***

 

 

Becky Emet, MSW, MBA

Career Coach | Life Coach

Choose a Life You Love founder

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Image of Maya Angelou sourced from http://lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com/inspiring-career-quotes/7/)