Healthy Lifestyle Workbook for 2023, New Year's Goals: 58

Well, hello everyone. Welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I want to chat with you about New Year's goals. Now, this is kind of a sore subject for a lot of people because quite often we have the best intentions of making some really big changes in the new year, uh, but then we get started and by the end of January it's already all over. And I want to share with you why I think this is. I think there are a few reasons. Um, but there's one that stands out in my mind that's the most, and it's the one that I find people struggle with the most, and that is taking on too much at the beginning of the year. It all becomes overwhelming, and then you just give up on all of the goals at the same time. So my recommendations today are, just like with getting started with keto, is kind of getting started very slowly. I think there are a couple of ways that you can approach this. You can just choose one major health goal for the year, or you can kind of divide your year into quarters. That's what I really like to do. So instead of taking on change your eating, start exercising, uh, you know, clean out your whole house, or whatever it is, whatever your goals for the new year are, you don't want to have them all on your plate right at the beginning of the new year. You want to spread them out throughout the new year. But doing some planning can definitely help you with this, and it can definitely help you be a lot more successful. So, uh, building on the habits over time is really what you're looking for. So say, for example, your goal is to get more organized in the new year, whatever that means to you. So it might be cleaning out your whole house, it might be reorganizing some things, but you want to start small. So if that's your goal, you might start with, okay, 15 minutes a week, right? That's, that's something that anybody can start with. 15 minutes a week, I'm going to dedicate time to organize a specific area of my house. So whether it's your kitchen, your pantry, whatever it is, you'll set a timer, you'll do it for 15 minutes, and then you'll stop. Or if you get so motivated that you keep going, that's okay too. But since you're telling yourself it's only gonna be 15 minutes once a week, you're so much more likely to stick with that than you are to say, I wanna reorganize my whole house. And just having that be like kind of this heavy goal that's hanging on you every day, and then every day that you don't work towards that, you just feel guilty. So this is what this is all about, is breaking up these small— or breaking up these large goals into much smaller goals so that they become more manageable and that they eventually become a habit. That is what you're looking for. You want to build on habits because while day-to-day motivation will always wane, when you create a habit— a habit is just something you, like brushing your teeth every morning, you You do it every morning without thinking, right? Because it's become a habit. Doesn't matter if you're not motivated that day. Well, there might be some days where if you're not motivated, you don't brush your teeth, but just, you gotta have habits over motivation. So it's using these techniques of starting slow, of having, you know, bite-sized goals that build upon each other in order to create these great habits. And this is really something that I have been working on for many years myself, and it's, it's just the way that I've I've learned to approach things. It's rooted in my background in psychology and habit change. Uh, if you wanna see some more things about creating new habits or things that you need to create new habits, be sure you go check out my YouTube channel. I have a couple of videos there that I did for Authority Magazine, and I'll put those links in the show notes. Um, but I've also got for you today a sort of, uh, creating your goals for the new year, healthy lifestyle sort of little workbook. Workbook. And so you can get this workbook for free just by going to healnourishgrow.com/books. And on that page, you'll see all of my books, but you'll also find this handy dandy little New Year's workbook. And one of the things that it's going to include is my core values and 10-year goals template. Now, this is something that's been available on my website, uh, ever since I launched it. It's something that I really believe in. It's been super helpful for people over the years going through this process. And when you hear 10 years, don't let that scare you because I'm about to break it down for you and explain it to you. And I'm also going to take you through a little guided meditation sort of imagery thing today to help you with this. But this is going to be part of the workbook. So again, go grab it for free. It's healnourishgrow.com/books. Also be sure to share this with your friends because almost everybody wants to do some, you know, new healthy habits for the new year. They're looking to create new goals for themselves, and this is just a great free resource that you can share with friends, and it also will help you stay on track because when you get other people involved in your goals, when you speak your goals out loud, when you write them down, when you let people know that that is what you are committed to and put it into words and put it out there in the world, in the universe, as hippie-dippy as that sounds, it It makes your resolve to stick with those goals stronger. And also having an accountability buddy is very, very useful in this process. So when you have somebody that you're accountable to that knows your goals, you're more likely to stay on track. So if you don't happen to have somebody like that in your life, um, this is something that I've been thinking about for a while. I wanna try to create kind of like an accountability group, um, in association with Heal, Nourish, Grow. So if this is something that you could use help with or you're looking for, reach out to me. You know, you can always email me info@healnourishgrow.com. Super easy. Just tell me that you're looking for this kind of thing and I will try to create that resource for you going forward. I'm also going to offer, if you want some help with this core values and 10-year goals exercise, I'm going to do some coaching calls around this. So if you want to have me coach you a little bit on these goals, kind of push you a little bit into, um, you know, really digging deep and you feel like you could use some help with that after we go through this exercise, again, just reach out to me. We'll schedule the coaching call. I'm only charging $50 for it. It's a half-hour call. It should be, uh, pretty useful for you. And, uh, yeah, so that is the plan for the new year. I, like I always say, I wanna be here to help for you and, and to be a help in your health journey. And I was just trying to think of a couple of things that I can do, um, going into the new year to support you on that. So that's what, why I wanted to really create this free resource, this this little healthy lifestyle workbook for you and then offer some coaching around that only if you need it. I think you'll have the things that you need in the workbook, but if you just want to talk about it more, refine it more, get more clarity, I'm happy to help you with that. So the first thing we've got here, and I didn't print this out big enough, so I'm going to put on my glasses so that I can actually read this, but the core values exercise is what you'll want to do first. And this is the part that's going to be like a little bit of a guided meditation. But what you wanna try to do is to close your eyes and you're going to get in touch with your core values. So what's a core value? It's really something that, for lack of better word to explain it, it feeds your soul. And it's something that you can kind of create almost like a personal mission statement around that really guides you in every goal that you have, every activity that you do on a day-to-day basis. You can look at that activity or whatever it is and say, is this in alignment with my core values? Is this in alignment with my 10-year goal plan? And if the answer is no, it's just an activity that's taking you away from what you're meant to do. What's your passion? What's your purpose? And you know, sometimes that can be a choice. Sometimes it can just be something, you know, silly or different or fun to try. But the majority of your activities, you want to be in alignment with your core goals. You want it to be. Bringing you closer to your 10-year goals. And again, don't get scared by that 10-year thing. It's going to make a lot more sense once we get there. But for the time being, let's just go through this core values exercise. So find a quiet spot where you can close your eyes and relax. And we'll start out— before I go into the exercise, I'll just kind of lead you through a little relaxation slash meditation exercise, which is what I used to do in my yoga classes all the time. So once you find a comfortable spot, the only— it can be lying down, you can sit cross-legged, you can sit in a comfortable chair. Uh, the one thing I ask is you either have your body or your feet in touch with a surface. So if you're lying down, you just want to completely relax and melt into the floor or into your bed. And if you're sitting at a chair or you're sitting physically on the ground, you want a part of your body to be like really grounded into the earth and in connection with the floor. Or the backs of your legs or your bottom or your whole back if you're on the bed. And then just take a few deep breaths and start breathing just in and out through your nose only. And if you're starting to notice that your mind is wandering as I'm giving you moments of silence, just observe that and then quietly bring your mind back to the task at hand. So all we're doing right now is focusing on breathing. If you need a specific point of focus, if this is a new idea to you, then bring your awareness to the space in between your eyebrows, sort of the middle of your forehead. We call that the third eye center in yoga, but it's also just a useful point of focus when you're working on your breathing. If you'd like a different point of focus, then bring your awareness to the air coming in through your nostrils. So observing that physical sensation as you breathe in and out through your nose. And now as you start to relax more and your breathing starts to slow, I'd like for you to make your exhale Again, in through the nose, out through the nose, but make your exhale slightly longer. So this is actually another technique that we use in yoga, breathing technique, but it has also been validated by psychological studies, and it is activating your relaxation response by extending the exhale slightly. So it's a way to bring yourself out of fight and flight and into relax and digest mode. So a few more breaths just like that, breathing in through your nose. Maybe it's a count of 3 in through your nose, count of 4 out through your nose. Just a rhythm that makes sense to you and does not cause additional stress on your system. And now, continuing to keep your eyes closed and breathing in a natural rhythm in and out through your nose, I want you to start to get in touch with your values. So what are some concepts or feelings or or things that are the most important to you. And these are things that whether or not you're achieving these on a regular basis, there are things that speak to you just at your core. So what, what kinds of feelings do you want to experience more of in your life? What kinds of things and people and ideas do you want to bring more of into your life? And then as you breathe and think of these concepts, ideas, feelings, and these again can be some that you're achieving on a regular basis now, but some that you may want more of in your life. And continue to breathe in and out through your nose. Start to take some slightly deeper breaths. As you inhale, really expanding your lungs, your belly rising so that you can fully inhale to every part of your lungs. And then as you exhale, allowing your belly to pull in toward your spine. And then gently open your eyes and take a moment to just pause and bring your awareness back to the room, back to the space that you're in. And then I'd like for you to get a pencil and paper or a pen. I don't know why I said pencil. But anyway, get a pen and paper and start to write down some of those things that you thought of. And so it could be a phrase, it could be Ideally, we're gonna want it to get it to words. And ideally, at the beginning, you want it to be 21 words of these things that are important to you. So this could take a couple of times doing this. And obviously, since this is just the first time that you went through this with me, you weren't expecting, okay, did you know you were gonna have to write 'em down at the end? Did you know what you were gonna have to do with them or anything like that? So I understand that you might need to come back to this. You might come back to this several times over a few days. And you can either use the little audio that I just did with the sort of a little meditation or guiding you through it just to kind of get you in touch. Or you can just, you know, sit down and contemplate in your own way. I do recommend like eyes closed and sort of doing some breathing and stuff first and just seeing what comes up for you because sometimes we're in a rush in day-to-day life. We're not quite in touch with any feelings that are coming up or any thoughts about, you know, things that you wanna achieve more of your life, your goals. We're just so busy rushing around. That quite often we don't take time to either think about these things or just feel these things. So take a few days, and I just wanna give you a few words here that are examples of the types of things that might come up that you want more of in your life, or the types of things that you want to just— sometimes it's hard to put a word on something, right? Or maybe it's a feeling connected to a word. But anyway, here are some of the examples just so you get an idea. Creativity, connection, lightheartedness, touch, relaxation, kindness, gratitude, support, fun, nature, accountability, humility, responsibility, laughter, music, loyalty, empowerment, patience, acceptance, passion, discipline. So you'll come up with your own, and maybe some of these words for you will be the same, maybe some of them will be totally different, but getting to what's at the core of your being and sort of creating this mission statement is what's going to allow you to more clearly define your goals and then to more clearly do things on a day-to-day basis that help you achieve these things. And so once you have your list of 21, maybe it's 25, however many that you come up with, and then just reflect on all of these words for a few more days after that. And then once you have, you know, another session when you finally feel ready, you have all your words down, you're feeling like pretty connected to this stuff, then have one more session where you close your eyes, do some breathing, think of these, you know, words and concepts that you've been reviewing over those few days. And then I want you to take your list that you've written out, 21, 25, however many it is, and then you're gonna circle your 5 most important, the ones that speak to you the very most out of the, your list. Of course, there's many things that we all want in our life that we all wanna experience on a daily basis, that we want love and gratitude and touch and laughter, and, and so many things, right? And that's all good. That's still a list you can go back and refer to. You can refine at a later time. You can just keep adding to it just to remind yourself of the values that you really want in your life. But the 5 most important are really what's going to become your core values and your mission statement that allows you to really achieve the goals that you want to achieve. So that is the first part of the exercise. Now onto the scary part, or at least it sounds scary, but I'm gonna break it down. It's really not that scary. And so then after you've identified your core values, you're gonna focus now on your goals. And so these are supposed to kind of closely align, and we'll do another exercise here for you of breathing and you know, thinking and feeling some things. So if you're not ready to do that right now, you can fast forward or you can come back to this at a later point. But for those of you who want to dive right into this, it's a little easier after you have identified your core values. But I'm going to go ahead and do it now because it's still useful because you can start to get an idea of as you feel around the core values, what it will relate to later, right? So, uh, let's just again close your eyes. Maybe you're still laying there as you were before. And same breathing, in and out through your nose. Take a few deep breaths here. And again, start to deepen your breath, slightly extending the exhale. Bringing your focus to either the third eye center, the inside of your nostrils, still focusing on your breathing, feeling the sensation of breath going in and out through your lungs and in and out through your nose. And now imagine yourself 10 years from now, what is your life like? Where are you living? What are you doing? What are you doing for work, if anything? What are you doing for fun? What are you doing for your well-being? What are you doing to feed your mind and your soul and your body? So feeding as far as food, what kinds of things are you eating? Are you traveling? Are you exercising every day? Are you going for walks in the mountains or are you going for walks on the beach? Are you going to yoga class? Are you spending time in a specific community? Thinking of those things, continue to take a few deep breaths and visualize with as much intensity and vividness and detail what your life looks like 10 years from now. What do you look like? How are you feeling? Hey, take that all in. Take a few more deep breaths here. Take one more final deep breath in. And take a big exhale out through your mouth. Let it all go. Okay, and open your eyes if you haven't already. And now we're down to writing things again. So that you can have 3 columns, like again, if you printed out the worksheet, you'll have space to do this. But under mind, you're gonna have topics like careers, relationships, finance, creativity, a paragraph describing this, what your life looks like in 10 years around those things. So anything it has to do with your mind, like learning new things or what you're doing for a job or creativity, all kind of mental sort of work, and around your relationships. And then in the next column we have body. So that is things like, um, nutrition, fitness, physical health. What do these things look like in 10 years for you? Have you changed your diet? Are you eating the same as you are now? Have you lost weight, gained weight, put on muscle? Whatever that looks like for you, all sort of body-focused around nutrition, physical fitness, health. What does that look like? And then spirit, and again, for some people this can seem sort of hippy-dippy. Now some people are very spiritual or very religious naturally, some people aren't. It doesn't matter which kind of person you are. This is things like mental health, spirituality if that's a part of it for you, religion if that's a part of it for you, and self-care. Just kind of how are you engaged with your, you know, the other mind part is more like concrete Stuff, the, this part is more like spirit, soul, like your, your being, if that makes sense. And so what is, what does your life look like around that sort of topic? And then based on those paragraphs that you wrote out, what is your life like? You might talk about like where you're living. You might talk about monetary goals in the mind part, if that's something, or savings goals or family goals, whatever it is. And then you're going to look at these 10-year goals. You're gonna write down 3 goals for each one of those. Now, if you don't have 3, that's fine. It could just be 1 or 2, but most of those things that, like, they encompass so much, most people are really likely to come up with 3, sometimes more. I always recommend to try to pick the top 3 just because, again, like we were just talking about, creating these new habits, new goals, it can be overwhelming if you take on too much at once. But here's the beauty of what we just did. The 10-year goals, after you get those down, that's the hardest part. And then you work backwards, then you work back to 5 years, and then you work back to 1 year, and then you work back to sort of things that you can do on a daily basis to support these. And that's really what we're trying to get to, are these things that we want to do on a daily basis that support these. So what you've just done, you've created your core values. If you got your 5 core values like narrowed down, some people like to write a personal mission statement with those. So incorporating those words into a mission statement or two. Because some of the words may more naturally go together and feed certain areas of these goals that you just wrote down. And then with the goals, the objective is— so the best example I can give you that most people can relate to or just understand is running a marathon. If you want to run a marathon, you don't just suddenly go out one day and run 26 miles, right? So for that year beforehand, you're starting to prepare. You are starting to, you know, maybe you're just starting to walk every day for a couple months, and then maybe you start to run one day a week or two days a week, and you just build and build and build and build up until eventually you reach your goal. So that's the same with these. So let's take, um, you know, one of the, the goals that's, um, mind-related, the first one. So let's say your goal is that you want to retire. In 10 years. You want to be retired. Okay, so what does that look like? Let's break it down. So if you want to retire in 10 years, then you'll need to know how much money that you need to do to— in order to retire. How much do you spend every month? And if you work backwards, okay, so if I want to retire in 10 years, in 5 years, how much will I need to have saved to get that goal? And then break it down in 1 year. What do I need to save in 1 year and a total of 10 to get to that final goal. This might include an investment strategy. This might include just putting a certain amount of money aside every week or every month. And then that's how you break it down to a manageable goal, is if you want to retire in 10 years, then you work through all these things and you figure out, okay, I have to save $100 a month to get to my goal of retiring in 10 years. That's probably not the right number, but let's just say that it is for simplicity's sake. And then you might even do daily goals. Well, how am I gonna save $100 a month? It could be like, okay, I'm gonna skip Starbucks a couple days a week, or I'm only gonna have Starbucks one day a week so that I can save that $100 a month. So this is where it can sometimes be helpful to have coaching for people to really identify like how to break these things down. Into more manageable chunks. So anyway, this is an exercise that I learned many, many years ago, and I have done it myself multiple times. And I would recommend, I mean, once a year might be too aggressive to do this every single year, but if you've never done it before, I definitely recommend doing it once just so that you get some kind of idea. If nothing else, when you get that personal mission statement or you get those 5 words that are your core values, then you can even just look at what you're doing on a day-to-day basis and kind of know if it's in alignment. So again, if, if one of your core values is connection to nature, that would make skipping a walk on a day something that you don't wanna do so that you know that like if you're talking yourself into skipping, you're like, no, my core, like it feeds my soul when I go connect with nature. So I know I need to go out and take my walk today. Something like that. It just leads you on a day-to-day. So even if the goals part seems overwhelming or seems like too much, just getting those core values down can really help you, you know, more easily make decisions on a day-to-day basis if doing a certain activity or choosing a certain thing is really in alignment with how you want to be in your life. What the goals part does is really make it more concrete. So if for example, nature is one of your core values, then having those goals, um, like if you break it down, eventually when you get on the ones that it's more like month to month, day to day, it's like, I know I need to go connect with nature, uh, 4 or 5 days a week. I need to be outside walking. Or if it's connect with nature in a bigger way, I need to take a vacation every year where I go spend some time in the mountains. And of course, this is like kind of my thing I'm talking about now, because that is definitely, um, I don't know if it was one of my top 5. I'd have to go back when I last did the exercise, but that is something that is really important to me. And so I always, you know, tell myself like, okay, what, what am I choosing right now to do instead of that when I know that that's one of the things that I really need to be in touch with my soul, to make me feel happy, to be able to do all the things in my life that I want to accomplish. Having taken care of yourself first and taking care of those kind of base needs. Maybe it's security for you. Maybe— so maybe if it's security or financial security, if that's one of your top goals, then doing things like buying a Starbucks every day is, is probably not going to match up for you, right? So hopefully this was helpful in some way. Like I said, if you need help, I am offering some coaching around this. Just email me, get in touch. Again, these, uh, this— the Healthy Lifestyles sort of like workbook, what I'm calling it. It's going to have some other things in there besides these two exercises, just some, you know, worksheets or ideas or things that you can do to kind of create a healthier lifestyle in the new year. So it, it'll be all aspects including, you know, exercise, movement, food, and it's just about taking baby steps. It's about taking steps that you can build on throughout the year. You always wanna make it as not overwhelming as possible. So again, starting out with, um, maybe breaking it down into quarters. This quarter, I'm just gonna work on cleaning up my diet and taking it slowly, one day at a time, one week at a time, making small changes and just build on them over time. That is much more likely to become a habit and to become something that you stick with than at the beginning of the year just saying, okay, I'm gonna exercise 5 days a week. And some people can do, you know, you need to know your personality. I always talk about that, right? Like some people are just these type A people where they can just flip that switch and it does seem to go like that for them. But most people would do better starting out slow. Um, so go download the healthy lifestyle little workbook. Again, it's at healnourishgrow.com/books. You'll find it there. Um, share it with your friends if you think it will help them.. And as always, thank you for joining me. Let me know how I can help you. Let me know what kind of content you want to hear about in the new year. I know this time of year is always full of a lot of fun, but also a lot of stress. And, you know, people start thinking about these New Year's goals, which is why I wanted to put this out in December so you could start to get some ideas about the kinds of things you want to address in the new year and what might be the easiest or best way to go about starting creating those new habits. Um, so again, have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will talk to you soon.