IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN...
Happy New Year, beautiful. I don’t know about you, but I have higher hopes for 2021 than the calamitous dumpster fire we just experienced. We all know it’s that time of year when we’re supposed to be thinking about what we want to do differently, how we’ll start the new year off fresh, what areas of our life we want to reset, recalibrate (maybe redo completely??). But truthfully, resolutions have never worked for me. Do they for you? Have you ever stated a resolution in January that still mattered by April? Real question, I truly want to know.
I’m the kind of person who cringes when asked “where do you want to be in 5 years?” I don’t know what I want for dinner, much less who I want to be when I grow up, so this causes me anxiety. I am certainly not without goals and ambition, it’s just not a mechanism or thought process that works for me.
I deal in the business of habits. Resolutions feel more like "hopes."
I think in terms of actions that I want to take - or actions I want to replace - in order to keep moving forward to a better version of me.
I am attracted to ACTION. I am rewarded by RESULTS. So I think, "what ACTIONS do I want to take to move me in the direction I am aiming?"
My word for 2021 is ACTIVATE. 2020 for me was far more passive than I care to repeat. And global and national dumpster fire aside, I personally was more passive and encumbered in 2020 than I plan to be this year. For me, ACTIVATE means "what actions am I focused on starting and repeating for success? What will I deactivate to support my success?"
It’s like this: when you go to bed tonight, what will you WISH you had done today? That’s my entire framework for the day, which will create my week, which will create my month… you get it. My point is that this is my daily focus to make this year a more useful, more impactful, more rewarding one for me.
For me, for now, this will include:
My mental health starts with my physical health. I feel so much stronger and so much more capable when I am comfortable and powerful in my own body. So I am going to wake up every day and ask how I am going to nurture that feeling for the day. Some days that will be rest, and some days it will be a walk, and some days it will be a killer workout, and exactly zero days will it be focusing on food as a means to that end.
I will activate the athlete inside of me. I will activate the strength in me. I will sit up straight and I will move my body in some way every day that I possibly can.
For January, I am activating DRY JANUARY and deactivating my quarantine-inspired friendship with prosecco and Grand Marnier. In other words, I am taking a break from alcohol in January because I want to make a bit of space for other things, and that seemed like a good place to start. You can join me on instagram if you want to participate or laugh at me.
ACTIVATE applies to many more areas of my life, too. I have activation plans for the On Air with Ella podcast and for my career that I prefer to look at as weekly challenges, not year-long expectations. More on those later.
I have other areas that I really want to DEACTIVATE as well. Thinking in terms of habits instead of resolutions (which feel a bit punitive to me sometimes), I consciously choose to deactivate whatever side of me that decided that scrolling on my phone is a productive activity. I am not giving up my phone, I am not punishing myself for this habit that I have cultivated, instead I am turning the volume down on that activity. I will challenge myself with the question I asked you earlier - when I go to bed tonight, what will I wish I had done today? When the answer to that question is "I wish I had spent 3 hours looking at other’s people’s creativity online," I’ll let you know, but meantime, I’m going to get more busy with my own life.
HOW ABOUT YOU?
What parts of you do you want to activate or invigorate in 2021?
What habits in your current day to day to you want to deactivate?
When you go to bed tonight, what will you wish you had done today? Let’s start there.
READ MORE
Still my number one pick for life-changing habit building - get yourself a copy of Atomic Habits by James Clear ...and read it with a pen!!
Questions? Contact me
Follow me on Instagram
Become a Patron
xxoo Ella