How are we in February already? How are your resolutions going?
Over Christmas when most people were out partying and stuffing their faces with eggnog and mincepies and whatever else people eat around Christmas I was holed up in my room glued to my computer.
I've had a pretty shitty year and a half if I'm honest. I've been dealing with a number of health issues and chronic pain which has had me in bed for more time than I ever care to remember and has left me feeling incredibly flat and numb and yuck. I KNOW I have the capacity to be a vibrant human being brimming with life and ideas and joie de vivre etc but wow that feels like it's a long way away from being my reality at the moment.
Drawing a line under self-pity
There comes a time whenever you're in a funk, where you just get absolutely sick of your own shit. And THAT is the time you actually take action that gets you going places that are better than the place you are now. Big change doesn't happen until you're absolutely sick of your own shit and bored of hearing the excuses coming out of your own mouth for why you can't xyz.
For me, once I get sick of drowning in self-pity and decide to claw my way out and start working on building my dream year instead of feeling sorry for myself about my current state of affairs. I start with a plan and a deep dive into actually getting to the root of problems and taking steps each day no matter how small to fix them.
My process
My method is an accumulation of different processes I've used over the years.
I start with realistically acknowledging how I feel right now. By realistic I mean I'm not making out things are worse than they are or better than they are - just non-judgementally stating the facts of how they are. This is hard, because often when we assess ourselves the instinct to judge and shame and 'should' all over ourselves is insanely strong. Avoid this at all costs because it is not helpful or constructive.
I start with acknowledging how I feel and where I am right now. Then I go off into dreamland fantasising about how I want to feel and how I want my life to be and I hoard images on a pinterest board that supports this because I am a highly visual person and for me words alone are not enough (if you want inspo you can check out my 2023 moodboard on pinterest). Then I look at what the gap is between where I am and where I want to be, and come up with a plan of how I can close that gap in a way that is effective and sustainable and achievable
I'm not saying 'achievable' in the sense of 'I want abs therefore I will force myself to hit the gym every day no matter what' because life isn't like that. If you want to set yourself a deadline and flog yourself to get there by all means go ahead knock yourself out. However for me, this aggressive approach to goals leads to burnout within a couple of weeks and failure and self loathing.
It is important to recognise that some days we'll feel so crap that simply getting out of bed is an achievement worth celebrating, and we have to adjust according to our energy levels and the things that life throws at us. But even when we feel crud we can still take a baby step towards that end goal by choosing things that support our vision like eating proper food and doing some yin yoga in bed which supports our body and gets us a step closer to having our dream body instead of slouching in front of Netflix eating an entire sharebag of doritos by ourselves.
How it's worked for me
I may not be a zillonnaire with Times bestseller book deals up my rear end like the big 'guru' people out there - the Mel/Tony Robbinses of the world - I'm just a normal flawed and vulnerable human being but I have achieved monumental things by my standards in my past using this method. lets go back 10 years, before the whole mindfulness guru movement. I was 26.
I started from a low point:
I was living with my parents after horrible sudden and traumatic breakup from the guy I thought I was about to marry
4 weeks prior to the breakup I had left my first 'real' job because it was extremely limiting, unfulfilling and making me miserable.
I believed I was worthless, fat and ugly
I believed I was shy, not outgoing or confident enough
I believed I was a shit designer who would never amount to anything because drawing for a living is not a proper job.
I believed I didn't have any ambition to do better for myself and
I wasn't rich enough for my ex's standards and believed there was something wrong with me for being obsessed with nature and creativity and simplicity and not being obsessed with money and status and fitting in with aristocracy
I believed I was bad with people and didn't have any friends (I had plenty of friends but they all lived all over the place and many were musicians who worked evenings and travelled a lot so it was hard to actually see people).
I believed I would always be a loser because I have no willpower and no real talent - if I'd had talent I'd be a somebody by now (I was only 26 at the time).
All of these things were things that people had told me I am, and limitations they told me I had, and for some reason I took them on as my own beliefs.
NEVER believe what other people tell you about yourself to be true!.
3 months after deciding I was done wallowing in self pity after finding myself single:
I had lost almost 30llb
I was in a job that paid me more than my ex earned
I had a social schedule that made my head spin
I was asked on so many dates I had to write notes on who was who.
I moved into a flat in Holland Park in Chelsea - an area of London my ex badly wanted to live in but couldn't afford.
I had already had a 5k pay increase and was on track for a promotion within 6 months which is almost unheard of in my industry for a fledgeling designer.
I had a huge amount of responsibility and was almost single-handedly branding a multi-million pound energy company.
I knew I was actually incredibly driven and ambitious and talented with a tremendous amount of willpower or I would not have got where I was at all, let alone in such a short space of time.
I also knew I was great with people because I was able to march into a huge room full of strangers with absolutely no fear, strike up conversations with anybody and come out with friends that I still have a decade later.
I know am both an introvert and an extrovert. I can be quiet and withdrawn when I am around people I have little interest in, or if I'm not in the mood to be sociable, but I'm not shy. I can be outgoing and very much be the life and soul of the party but I equally need to shut myself in my room for a weekend with no contact with the outside world and decompress afterwards. Both these things are ok and I will never apologise for myself for honouring my needs.
I got there all by myself by deciding that I could. And while I was getting there I realised I knew for a fact that none of the things other people said about me had any truth to them whatsoever - that they were projecting their fears and insecurities onto me, keeping me small, because that made them feel better about themselves and their own shortcomings.
The power of manifesting to create your dream year
In my journal during one of my lowest points I wrote down 'my dream day is waking up in my own flat somewhere nice in London and sitting in the sunshine at the Market Street restaurant in Chelsea Farmer's Market with a Mojito and laughing eating ice crea, with a load of friends I don't have yet.' I imagined it so vividly I could feel the sunshine on my skin and hear the traffic outside when I wrote it down. There is a photo of me and 5 friends in the sunshine eating ice cream and drinking mojitos at the Market Street restaurant in Chelsea Farmer's Market that was taken less than a year later. When I got home to my nice flat in Holland Park I was overcome with so much love and gratitude that I cried happy tears.
Last year I found out about manifesting and I read about it with a raised eyebrow thinking to myself 'I've never read such bullshit in my life' until I realised I had manifested that day at the burger place, and many other things without realising that I was manifesting them. Needless to say I am very open minded about manifesting now. There is so much about the world we don't know it's foolish to have a closed mind to things that seem a bit improbable because we don't know or understand them yet. But it's equally important not to be so open minded that your brains fall out. Manifest away but don't sit in your room and spend all your energy dreaming of your perfect life and then get pissy for the universe for not delivering when you haven't done your own legwork!
I've been feeling incredibly flat lately after a series of significant health problems have had me on my knees for almost two years on top of a global pandemic. I badly want my life back and my energy so I can get up and do things and lose my fear of injury and pain and illness and feel like there's a point to me again; but it feels like every time I try and get back on my feet I get another uppercut that takes me straight down to the mat. I've been alive long enough to know that I am a prizefighter not a quitter and I will keep trying to get up no matter what, but I won't pretend it's not exhausting and demoralising, and sometimes you need a little boost and a chance to refocus and get clarity on where you want to go so you can start stumbling towards it bloodied and bruised though you may be. And sometimes that involves looking back at your past at the ugly times and seeing how the hell you got yourself out of crapfests before because even if the situation is different there are always useful lessons to be learned from it.
Tony Robbins: Hype or hero?
A couple of weeks ago, an ad on instagram popped up for a free Tony Robbins seminar that spanned 5 days and I signed up out of morbid curiosity. I went in incredibly skeptical because I'm British and anything that has stadiums full of adoring fans yelling and crying and jumping up and down while some hype merchant with a mic tells you how to live your life screams 'cult' to me. But I have to say after attending those 5 days I can see what all the fuss is about.
The bells and whistles and hype still isn't my vibe, but I understand now why he does it - because overwriting years if not decades of negative beliefs and conditioning can't be done by thinking alone - you have to get into your body to really create a total change because emotions run deeper than just thoughts in our heads, which I can definitely agree with based on prior personal experience. With that understanding, Tony's 'hype-merchant' approach makes sense - whereas from the outside it looks like a bunch of desperate people at a faith healing convention willing to believe anything if it ends their suffering.
Tony seems to have a real sense of clarity about people, what drives and motivates them as well as what cripples them and keeps them stuck. He doesn't mince words or sugar coat his opinions either which I don't always agree with but I respect. In his seminar he said several times
'you hang on to your pain story until you find something that you value more than your pain'.
In other words we stay stuck until we become so uncomfortable that not taking proactive action is no longer an option. He also said that if we're not growing we start dying inside, and that if something is really getting to us it's a sign we have outgrown where we are, and have still more growing to do. I can't argue with this.
Radical change
I don't believe life has to be constant radical change, but I do believe we need to have a vision that resonates with us on physical and emotional levels that is not just a series of disjointed boxes to tick off - and use that vision to formulate a plan. I believe our 'new years resolutions' should be beacons to guide us in the direction we want our life to head rather than self-created mountains we have to force ourselves climb in order to feel like we are worthy and have accomplished something.
My method
My method combines a few different techniques I've developed over the years from listening to a variety of other people.
It started with Dawn Barclay's core values workbook for getting to know your core values, then reading The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin and realising I'm a questioner/rebel (which explains so much about why I'm such a pain in my own arse), Danielle LaPorte's The Desire Map which is a beautiful book I absolutely swear by and encourage everyone to read, which is the one that made me realise new years resolutions don't have to be done one way, and choosing how you want to feel is a much more interesting and effective way of goal setting. And lastly, my own experience as a designer of breaking things down and making them as simple and beautiful as possible. I rely heavily on my digital planner and vision boards to get me motivated and keep me going. I also firmly believe in lists, and that goals have to be visible and interacted with on a regular basis in order to be achieved.
If I was to break down my experience with getting out of ruts into action points they would be:
10 action points you can start taking today
Take stock of where you are. Be objective, not self-damning. Stick to the facts.
Consider where you want to be
Look at where you are and where you want to be and think about what steps you can take to get you from one to the other. Break them down into actionable steps you can take every day to help you get there
Get inspired - get moodboards, meditate, manifest, print things out - fill yourself up with how you want to be
Change your environment to support your goals and hack your behaviours to make the resistance between you and the thing you want/need to do easier to overcome: for example if you want to go to the gym, put your gym stuff out the night before. Make it easier to do the thing than not do the thing.
Put your goals somewhere visible - it's too easy to let life stuff get in the way and lead you off track
Make regular check-ins with yourself to track your progress
Be compassionate with yourself - if you slack off or don't hit your targets it's not a failure. Don't stop, don't give up. You only fail if you give up. It doesn't matter if weeks or months have passed, just pick it up and go again.
Evaluate what's working and what isn't - including if those goals are even ones you still wish to pursue, and adjust accordingly
Try and enjoy the process and don't be too hard on yourself.
You got this!
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