Counting down the last hours of 2015 and gearing up for the New Day that launches us off into a new year full of possibilities always brings about thoughts of how we can improve our lives, our vitality and our emotional & mental health.

We begin to dive deep into what we enjoyed and especially what we didn’t enjoy. In fact, as humans it’s often way easier to dive into the muck than it is to celebrate the great.

This is a product of evolution, we linger way more in the ugly because its reflections expose us to all those things we NEED to be aware of in order to know exactly what it is we need to improve upon. Without this reflection no conscious change is possible. So yes, both of these avenues of reflection, the good and the bad, have their value and both should be honored and celebrated.

I propose we begin by investigating what the great moments of 2015 were before we step into what drug us down, for a few reasons. The first is obvious – when we take the time to celebrate our successes we can then avoid feeling so trapped by the not so great moments. Also, starting with the good, sets the lens of our focus to allowing more of the good to be seen and acknowledged in our inner world because let’s face it, we are way too hard on ourselves to begin with. Lastly, focusing on the good is light and refreshing, it uplifts us to a place where the bad seems less bad, it can bring us to a place where we take those failures less personally, decreasing the time we spend dwelling there. It creates the mental space to be more solution oriented.

Sit down in a comfy place, pour yourself a great cup of tea or beverage of your favorite flavor and begin to bask in all those precious memories where you were proud, engaged and in love with life. Write down every event that took you to these higher states of being. All events no matter how small should be included – if you remember them as great moments they have their place and validity in you wanting to call in more of them.

Look at how you can bring more of these moments into your life and write down those inspirations that come to you to do so. The list should be as long as you can make it. Spend time celebrating and feeling those feelings of higher living!

Bask In The Happy Light Of Your Successful Moments!

Now time to call in evolution through hard knocks, those difficult realizations, start to remember those failures gently and with compassion. Without going into the stories behind why you messed up or failed dearly at something, write them out as the observer. You want to get into a place of compassion with yourself, as though you were listening to a friend– in a very non-judgmental way– talk about her failures, her disappointments and her feelings of sadness that accompany these events.

Once you are in this place the list will begin to flow more easily and less painfully. Pragmatically write them all out, all the things you would prefer forgetting but know that by acknowledging and celebrating, you evoke the credence that provides the room for growth and change to burst though.

NO, THEY DID NOT HAPPEN FOR NOTHING, they happened because you decided to step into foreign soil and say or do something that didn’t work out because you lacked the awareness that comes only through experience. They were stepping-stones, NECESSARY STEPS IN YOUR JOURNEY TOWARDS GREAT MOMENTS.

Once they are all written out, begin to look at how they could have been avoided, move into solution based thinking and muster up a few ways that you could have done them differently, in a smarter and better way, to have called in the results you were actually aiming for.

Take a Deep Breath And Release All Tension You Are Holding On To…The Hard Part Is Over!

Bringing awareness to these things is what allows us to improve upon ourselves, our relationship to others and accomplish our dreams. It holds us in a higher perspective over our lives and immediately deepens our understanding of self-limitations. It gives us the opportunity to grow into greatness.

The last thing I want to share with you to HELP EASE YOUR WAY INTO A NEW YEAR OF BETTER LIVING is how to deal with BAD HABITS.

Oh those pesky bad habits that we loath over, the big ones and the small ones that we’re ashamed of, the ones we kill ourselves quietly and not so quietly over. I personally, like many others have been working on these throughout my whole life. Every now and then we come across an individual in the world that does not appear to suffer from destructive bad habits but usually what we encounter are people that talk about being suck in them and feeling powerless to them.

What I have come to discover in my own journey of overcoming bad habits is that we don’t need to focus on them or try to figure out how to fix them! That’s right, you heard me correctly, we don’t need to worry about them. The only thing we need to think about is what good habits we would like to bring into our life.

You see these habits don’t really belong to us, they were taught to us, they were coping mechanisms so we need not feel entangled with them at our core. We only need to acknowledgment them and then pay more attention to those habits we wish to cultivate.

The reason why this works magic is because by bring in habits that are beneficial to your body, mind and spirit, you begin to elevate yourself to a place where there is less and less usefulness in holding on to destructive habits. Bad habits are usually in place to preserve a part of us that feels helpless to the world and our life’s circumstances.

When we increase the positive feed back activity in our lives we decrease the reasons to reinforce habits that are there to perpetuate our feelings of helplessness. We move away from a victim mentality into a creator mentality. We feel empowered thus we easily assume responsibility for our lives and our daily choices.

Also by removing the focus from the bad habits we release resistance to them, so for example, when we buy that useless item to hide a feeling of emptiness, or chain smoke those cigarettes to distract us from undesirable emotions, we are way less likely to disengage when we are in the mist of the bad habit, meaning we are more present during these moments, meaning we more fully become aware of their underlying purpose.

Awareness Shifts Everything, By Being More Fully Present While We Are Practicing Bad Habits, We Are More Easily Able To Address Underlying Issues & Let Go of Them For Good.

I sincerely wish you all a great 2016, filled with a renewed sense of vitality, an open heart, greater internal and external freedom and lastly much inspiration to share yourself more fully with this gorgeous world of ours!

Xx

JD