With all our best intentions and hopes, why is it so hard to keep up and succeed with our New Year’s health and wellness resolutions? Guest writer, Aneta Grabiec, explains…
After all, we wish for the good things: eating less to lose weight, quitting smoking, drinking less, exercise more to look better, meditate to ditch stress…what is holding us back from achieving all of this?
Why do most all these efforts fall short after setting them up?
The reason is you. You are the obstacle to your goals, to your New Year’s resolutions.
How? Why?
When was the last time you gave yourself a chance to slow down, simplify, and care for yourself? When was the last time you listened to your body and gave it the mental or physical break it required, nourished it with the food it needed and treated it with the adequate recharging hours of sleep?
Before the new can come, you must acknowledge the old, accept it and then understand why you need to clear it and let it go in order the needed new change could settle in.
Why are we so afraid to let go?
Because old habits, patterns and routines are safe, effortless and there is no failure! Our drive to attain and succeed comes at a great cost to the soul. We are malnourished, if not starved, when it comes to compassionate self-acceptance, awareness, and care. We yearn for simplicity but struggle to find it. We ache for balance but can’t sustain it.
It is impossible to keep up with it all, with the pressure and demands we put upon ourselves, all at once with the ambition to get it all first time round, let alone clear the things and thoughts that have caused us to feel so overwhelmed in the first place.
Most social and cultural New Year’s resolutions do not make room for us to feel the emotions that come up when we clear, and they make us feel bad when we fail (yes, I’m using the word ‘fail’ here to show its positive and meaningful significance in the evolution of the change).
So how to acknowledge the deepest hunger, need and success of these resolutions?
- Accept yourself, make friends with yourself and fall in love with who you are: acknowledge and accept every wrinkle, pigmentation and stretch mark. Face with confidence and respect those love handles and any extra weight….start feeling comfortable with what you see.
- Take into account the fight-or-flight response, any time you face your challenges and crave for changes
- Recognise what energy your thoughts and emotions carry. Learn to apply this energy to serve yourself. Learn to choose what thoughts and emotions to hang onto
Now, if you still want to succeed with your New Year’s resolutions?
Put Yourself First
For example, you won’t lose weight until you recognise what you are hungry for. What are you truly trying to fill? Is it the stress, emptiness, unfulfillment, not feeling enough?
Recognise, understand and clear what makes you feel unsettled and causes stress.
Clearing is an inside job that begins and ends within you.
It is not something you “do” or squeeze into your life with a fixed timeframe. If you want a bikini body* for the week of holidays in August, don’t jump on the fad diet in July! Rather start applying a healthy lifestyle from today!
*And don’t forget MFML’s view on attaining a bikini body: (1) Accept your body. (2) Put it in a bikini. (3) Tada! That’s your bikini body 😉
It’s a lifestyle – a journey – that doesn’t always make sense, or go in a straight line for the victory. It is not “getting rid of” but letting go of the things and thoughts that get in the way of realizing our true nature and best life. It is a journey to creating our new mindset, our best happiest self. The journey of going slower and lasting longer. Becoming more aware that slow but consistent is the secret to effortless success with our New Year’s resolutions.
WELCOME to 2018! A year to clear what is holding us back. A year to do less and be more. A year to invest in you, to nourish you and be you.
With love
Aneta Grabiec, The Wellness Designer xx
Aneta is a Wellness Coach, Nutritional Therapist, Food Relationship Expert, Yoga Therapist, Raw Chocolate Lover, author of “The Health Book of Chocolate”. She also runs wellness retreats, workshops and 1-to-1 coaching all around the world.
To get in touch with her or find out more, visit www.TheWellnessDesigner.com
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