4 Steps to Help You Feel Better in the New Year

 New Year, New You! We hear it over and over again. Let’s stop obsessing over what we want to be and acquire and start thinking about how we want to feel. This is how I’ve set goals for years. I shared a post here and IGTV video about my process here. In this post I will walk you through,  linking you to some of the resources I use.  Tomorrow I will share the January intentions I committed to in my Glory Days Daily Planner. 

First and foremost, you need to believe this process will be beneficial to your life. After Rory’s surprise diagnose I found anything related to being hopeful, having vision or trusting God really hard. I was jaded. I had to go dark to eventually find my way back to the light. In 2017 I refused to pick a word that New Years Eve, but a month later God laid Victory on my heart.

The years prior to Rory I had some difficulty. I worked so hard only to come up short in multiple areas time and time again.  Areas that I felt I was meant to focus on in life. So around Jan 2014 I put my hands up and said surrender was my word. Boy did I get hit with a lesson. So when Victory was given to me in the early morning hrs of February 2018 I wasn’t sure if our definitions of this word would be the same. He promised me victory in motherhood. I felt strongly that surrender was learned and I was safe to walk into a new season. A year later we found out Wyatt was on the way. So much healing has taken place since that night. I tell you this to encourage you to trust good is meant for you and to let you know that you can rise out of hard seasons. 

If you find yourself in a time of disbelief or fearful to hope again, spend time filling your mind and heart with words, music and people that can build your faith. When I knew I could no longer handle living in indifference and sadness I put my headphones on and started saturating myself in encouragement. This sermon by Steven F. from Elevation Church was a turning point for me in healing.  He continues to spur me onward weekly. This might be a bit woo woo for some but I also was encouraged by the recordings of Abraham Hicks. It reminded me that we can over analyze our experience and my life isn’t meant to break me down. 

Here is the playlist I made to help my mind stay on track in the year after Rory was born. 

Ok, after you have yourself in a space of possibility, dump it all out. You can have one journal or multiple. I shared here how I have one per area of life. Personal, Family, Business… On the first page I let it all out. My biggest hopes and dreams. What my mind says is impossible I put it down and feel all the feelings of these dreams coming to pass. After this I read it over thinking about how I would feel if all of this would happen.  

 Would you feel: 

Abundant 

Confident 

Connected 

Peaceful 

Restored 

 Ask yourself, what am I longing to feel? 

Once you’ve landed on a core desired feeling make a visual of what living with these feelings would look like. You can put pictures of your favorite real life memories or cut images out of a magazine the old school way. There is something about putting it on paper that makes it feel more legit vs building one on Pinterest, so get messy. 

 After your board is created write out the behaviors or actions that would create those feelings in your day to day. Now remember, no one feels one thing all the time and we do have life to contend with. There will be hard days, you will have times where even with the best of effort you can’t take the actions you want to take that day. But, I can promise you if you focus on what you want to feel vs what you don’t want to feel (or currently feel) life will get better.   

I want pause to say, life with small children has its limitations. Some of my most frustrating times  center around feeling like the world is whizzing past me, while I’m sitting in my PJs with unwashed hair nursing a baby for the millionth time. I try to remember I will never just sit like this again, because if it wasn’t for my baby needing to eat I wouldn’t be sitting now. It’s a gift to have the chance to sit. So if you are in that space too, hold tight we will be in constant motion again soon enough. Don’t let images of others moving along get you down. 

Alright lets round this out! Break your listed actions into daily habits and SCHEDULE these habits in your planner. We make appointments for everyone, we drive our children to hundreds of hours of enrichment programs. You make it happen for them. It’s important to make it happen for yourself. If you feel like a pile of crap, sad and lost, you’re not gong to feel better if you don’t take action. All of this effort will be wasted if you don’t do something different. It won’t need to be fancy, just focus on how you want to feel and do more of what makes you feel that way or do less of what’s not working. You can do this! 

Later this week I will share what I have put on my January intention page and how I plan to take action on my core desired feeling. This is a long game!  We can have the same word for years, we can give ourselves as much time as we need to get it right. We just need to try.