New Year, New Intentions...right?
You’ve entered a new year so surely you have new intentions for the following new, shiny 365 days right? Maybe not. For many people who maintain their confidence at positive levels a new year simply means continuing the great things from the previous year, dialling in on the intention and creating some small goals. How you start your year sets the tone for what is to come, so have you thrown the baby out with the bath water or have you started completely anew and what is best for you?
New Year Resolutions are very much a trend. WHOOP yep I said it. Many people set New Year Resolutions because that is what culture tells us we should do. This culture teaches us that goals are aspirations are important but it also subliminally reminds us that last year we just weren’t good enough by bombarding us with ‘New Year New You’ messages. I’ll be honest I’ve used the New Year New You or Me phrase on myself before. I don’t believe this is helpful for high performers. As a high performer you excel at being hard on yourself. So when you enter in a new year thinking (even in the slightest) that I need to ditch who I was, what I did and where I was going and leave it back in the previous year you become devoid of self compassion, you also tend to forget learning that has already happened.
One of the most supportive ways you can have consistently high levels of confidence is to pause and take stock of 3 things:
What did I learn?
What did I love?
What could I have done without?
When you answer these questions don’t just think of external things or people around you spend time thinking about what you learnt about yourself, what you loved about yourself and what treatment or attitude you had with yourself that you could have done without.
These are great questions that helps you frame your New Year goals. Yes you may have brand new things you want to achieve or different ways of being for 2023 but remember to recognise what you are already crushing. You cannot truly know the growth that you want to experience without knowing this first.
in coaching at Magnetic Confidence we do this through spending time with clients reflecting on these questions across all aspects of their life and then going deeper. Why do we have certain attachments to what we did, didn’t do, love, didn’t love and the way we perceive the previous year to have gone. Without this reflection our clients cannot move forward and neither can you.
Think about it, how many people said that ‘last year was the worst year and I’m making this year much better’? Billions right? How many people actually follow through on their goals? Less than 25% according to a 2023 Arianna Huffington study. Knowing what you want to achieve or how you want to be this year won’t help you have a different year, being self compassionate will. So if you want to get hardcore about new intentions I would encourage you to have an intention to first recognise- how good am I?
