Happy New Year, beautiful! The start of a New Year is always a time when we find ourselves reflecting on the past with a view to stepping into the future positively, with ideas about how to improve our lives with the help of intention and goal setting. As humans we have a tendency to always want to fix ourselves or to be better versions of ourselves and this desire really kicks in about now.

Have you ever considered that you don’t need fixing… that you just need to create the conditions that support your evolution / progress? Growth takes time and like when you plant a bulb in the soil, you have to create the supportive conditions in order to see it blossom.

Let’s release the pressure to start the year with all of the answers and allow ourselves the grace to experience the year and then reflect on our growth in 365 days time.

Here are some of the methods that I’ve found supportive over the last couple of years and I’m definitely utilizing this month… I’m sharing them because I’m sure you’ll find something helpful… take what resonates and leave the rest… here goes:

Create some pockets of silence

Where possible create some pockets of silence where you can just sit and be, where you can reflect, meditate or journal. You may need to create more than one pocket over a day or a few… take what you need.

relax

Celebrate your growth

growthYou’re not exactly the same person that you were last year… you may not feel hugely different, but you are: we grow and evolve and sometimes it’s only when we allow ourselves to be still and quiet that we can observe our evolution. Personally, I don’t think that we celebrate ourselves enough …so start now!

Seek Clarity

Spend some time reflecting on and getting really clear: on what you love, like and merely tolerate. The loves and likes that feed your spirit, boost your energy and raise your vibration, while the things that you merely tolerate or dislike generally have the opposite effect.

This is an opportunity to shape the next chapters of your life, so get clear about what beliefs about yourself and your world you are starting this year with that are different to the beginning of last year. What have you outgrown and would like to let go of? This leads us nicely onto…

Shed what doesn’t serve you

Shedding is about identifying any draining dynamics in your personal or professional life and being able to tell those involved that things need to change. This is the perfect time to get serious about setting or reaffirming your boundaries, both personal and professional… effective boundaries ultimately lead to better relationships, less stress and less resentment.

Think about the amount of energy you’ve expended on things that simply don’t matter- issues, situations and even people who didn’t actually add any positivity or value to your life but just took up emotional space, drained your energy and left you depleted. Time to shed them! If you’re realising that things that you used to like doing no longer light you up…shed them! This allows you to create space for the new. It’s important to remember that your energy is valuable and it is finite…

Allow for an ‘Easeful’ startself hug

Easeful is the word. Yes it’s a new year and you’ve got plans and goals etc….but avoid the temptation to overwhelm your schedule right now… resist the pressure to get everything organised and structured… allow for an easeful start: eg. yes you may want to get fit this year, but it’s likely to be less stressful and more sustainable if you start with something simple like walking a few times a week, and then adding in the next layer which might be a class or activity of some sort the following month.

Rather than rushing to set a whole lot of intentions in the first couple of weeks think about 2 or 3 healthy habits that you can introduce to your existence that can have a tangible impact on your wellbeing without creating unnecessary stress. Eg a daily walk or setting an alert on your phone every 90 minutes to drink a glass of water etc…

Leave space rather than over filling your schedule with tight timelines and activities, leave some space for experimentation, that way you’ll have the space to try new things out without feeling pressured.

Learn to say ‘no’

You know full well how many times you’ve said ‘yes’ to something or someone, when in your head you were shouting ‘nooooooo’ ! We all do it…we want to make others happy, we don’t want to disappoint etc… but at what cost? More often than not your self care pays the price, you miss out on the rest that you promised yourself or your stress levels increase and then you get angry at yourself for not simply saying ‘no’ when you needed to.

Commit to restsleep

Rest is more than just going to bed at night or taking a nap….so much more and it takes many forms. Here’s an extract that perfectly describes all that rest can be from one of my favourite books:

“Rest is not simply pushing the pause button on your day. Rest is not merely taking a break. Rest is about replenishing, restoring, renewing, recovering, rebuilding, regenerating, remolding, and re-pairing.” Sacred Rest by Saundra Dalton-smith MD.

I know for sure that so many of us are not getting sufficient sleep, let alone rest…it’s not easy to achieve with our busy lives in a constantly ‘on’ world, but we have to try perhaps by making small adjustments to our daily lives.

Use your ‘Grounding Anchors’

We can often find ourselves needing something to help us feel calm and connected, especially if we are feeling anxious, overwhelmed or just need soothing and many of us have grounding techniques that we use to help us to come back to ourselves in the here and now, with more clarity and calm.

Choose the techniques that work best for you and make them your ‘grounding anchors’, they can be used daily as part of your morning or evening routine or as short bites whenever needed.

They could include….

Short bites could be…journal

  • A breath work practice [could be just 3-5 minutes long]
  • A short meditation or sitting in silence
  • Getting out into nature
  • Putting on your headphones and listening to something that uplifts you for 5 or 10 minutes
  • Playing with a pet

Here are some journal prompts…

Spend some time over the next couple of days reflecting on where you experienced the most personal growth or inner expansion in 2024:

  • In what ways do you feel that you are you being called to evolve in 2025?
  • Think back to the beginning of 2024… what was your word for the year? Do you feel that it resonated throughout the year?
  • What word are you going to choose as your word for 2025?

Feature by Denise Rabor, founder of Wow Beauty