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Give Yourself A Fresh Start
Let’s state the obvious: there are only 11 days left this year, until 31st December 2021. This means that if you haven’t already started preparing yourself for a successful 2022, it’s definitely time to do that. And to help you with that today I’m sharing with you my 9 ways to reflect, reset and renew to make the most of a fresh start in the new year.
The best is yet to come!
“That last page turned is a perfect excuse to write a whole new book.”
1. Reflect On A Previous Year
The first step in the process of resetting and refreshing your life for a successful 2022 is to reflect on last year. Taking the time to think about what you experienced, analyze what happened, meditate on the most important moments, evaluate your feelings and motives of your actions will help you to understand yourself better and identify what changes you need (or want) to put in place to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
Self-reflection is a powerful tool that you can use to understand how have you changed over the last twelve months, understand the meaning behind your current life experience, and set the right goals that align with your values. Only when you do that you can be sure that the action you take will help you to turn your dreams into reality.
So the real question is:
- Are you ready to embark on the journey towards your dreams?
If your answer is yes, start by reflecting on what your 2021 was like, ask yourself 12 questions that you will find below, and write down your answers.
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What goals did I achieve?
- What goals did I miss?
- What was my greatest achievement in 2021?
- What was the most beautiful experience I had?
- What is one thing I wish I did this year but didn’t because I was afraid?
- What were the most important life lessons I’ve learned during the last 12 months?
- What I am the most grateful for?
- Did I reach the career milestones or goals I wanted to this year? If no, why not?
- Did I make an effort to maintain a work-life balance consistently this year?
- How have I changed in the past 12 months?
2. Create A Vision Board
A Vision Board is a visual collage of images that represents your goals and dreams that you’re aiming to turn into reality. This piece of art is a powerful tool that you can use to visualize your future self, narrow down your desires, and maintain your focus on specific goals.
When creating an inspiring vision board for 2022 you can start with a big picture of what do you want to achieve, who do you want to become and how do you want to feel within a particular area of life within the next year. Be specific and make your ideas as clear as possible.
- Define your purpose
- Discern your intentions
- Dream big but keep it realistic - set challenging BUT achievable goals!
- Set specific SMART goals for personal growth (self-improvement goals are the key to unlocking your full potential by giving you a real possibility to evolve in a better version of yourself and align your life with your core values)
- Be selective on what you want to put on your vision board (it should create focus, not chaos and disorientation)
- Find capturing images and inspirational quotes that you will add to your vision board to make your motivation flow effortlessly every single time you look at your vision board (do your research using the internet, find images and words that perfectly illustrate your short-term future, print them out and stick them onto your vision board)
- Start creating your highly personalized vision board that will create excitement and enthusiasm every single time you will see it
- Place your vision board somewhere that you can see it (my vision board is above your desk)
- Set the right mindset (Be your own cheerleader, not your worst critic)
What's Included In This Workbook
- 8-step formula for success in setting and achieving goals
- 10-step process
- The magic 4 formula of gaining clarity in setting the right goals
- 6 laws of Goal Setting Universe
- Goal Setting Motto
- Strategic planning process
- Specific (goal setting related) knowledge
- Powerful (and simple) tips to developing a successful mindset
- Creative & Inspiring exercises to develop a crystal clear vision of your (ideal) future
- Step by step guide to set the right (SMART) goals
- A simple strategy to create an effective (and highly personalized) action plan
- Tools for designing your own schedule, rocking your to-do list and creating an ideal daily routine
- Time Management Tips (The Eisenhower Box, The Pareto Principle worksheets included)
- Yearly, Monthly & Weekly Goal Setting (+ Goal Progress Index)
- SMART goals checklist
- Mind Mapping for SMART goal setting
- Checklists
- Celebration challenges
- Creative Worksheets
- The wheel Of life & fulfillment scale
- Flow State Rituals
- Professional Skills Development Tracker
- Powerful Habit Trackers
3. Create An End Of Year Ritual
One of the best ways to end and honor the passing year is to perform the ritual of Catharsis. If you’re not familiar with this term, “Catharsis” comes from Greek and means “purification”, “cleansing” or “clarification”. The whole purpose of this act is to release difficult emotions stuck in your body, let go of the emotional pain and cleanse your soul so that you can leave the past behind and move forward.
This healing process offers you a therapeutic transformation, a positive change, and freedom from the past. Sounds complex, but it’s a simple act. Most important of all, what cleansing ritual you create to end the year on a positive note and how you perform it is entirely up to you. I like to write a letter to myself describing the most difficult, challenging, and painful moments I’ve experienced over the last 12 months and I burn it. This is my spiritual process of self-healing. If you’ve never tried it I highly recommend you do it. However, if you’re not interested in the burning letter ritual in order to heal the past, you can try painting, dancing, meditating, screaming… or any other type of activity that can help you release difficult emotions and make the most of the fresh start of a New Year.
4. Replace Bad Habits With Good Habits
The next step in resetting and refreshing your life for a successful 2022 is to identify your bad habits that are hurting your progress and create a plan of action to finally break them so that you can make the new year your best year ever.
Breaking bad habits is difficult even if you know perfectly well that they are holding you back from succeeding. This is because every bad habit we develop addresses a certain need we have in life. It helps us dealing with difficult feelings, stressful situations, uncertainty, low self-esteem, or fear of failure. In other words, we use bad habits as a coping mechanism that serves us to deal with stress.
That’s why getting rid of bad habits is so difficult unless you find a good habit (a sunstitute for a bad habit) that serves the same purpose and addresses the same need in your everyday life but it’s actually benefitial to you. If you manage to do that the whole transition will be smooth and enjoyable.
- Create a list of your bad habits that sabotage your health & success
- Look at your list of bad habits that you want to break.
- Think about what is a certain need you have in life a particular habit addresses
- Figure out what good habits would serve the same purpose as your bad habits
- Generate as many ideas as possible before considering any of them.
- Choose substitutes for your bad habits and think about how you could incorporate them into your daily life
5. Detox Your Digital Life
When is the best moment for a digital declutter? Only when seeing notifications on your phone makes you feel overwhelmed? Or maybe when looking at your desktop folders causes you anxiety? What about being afraid of opening an email box? Is it the right time to do a digital declutter?
Well if you ask me, I think that decluttering and organizing your digital life should be part of your routine.
We live in a Technological. Era, whether you like it or not, so unless you live alone in the wild without internet access (but you’re reading this post…) you need to detox your digital life regularly. So if you haven’t done that recently, now it’s the perfect moment to do that. So take a deep breath and:
Declutter Your Phone
- Uninstall apps that you don’t use
- Backup your files
- Make saving your photos to a cloud service automatic and clean gallery photos
- Review your contact list and remove
- Remove Notifications
- Optimise your battery usage
Declutter Your Email
- Open and read unread emails
- Delate unwanted and unimportant emails
- Organise your email folders
- Unsubscribe from unwanted emails
- Remove notifications
- Update your email signature
Declutter Your Computer
- Clean up your computer’s messy desktop
- Organise your files
- Back your files up
- Remove programs and apps that you don’t use anymore
- Update your computer
- Organize passwords and usernames
Declutter Your Browser
- Organise your open tabs
- Organise your bookmarks
- Remove unwanted extensions
Declutter Your Storage
- Put your storage devices in one place
- Pick your main file source (I use Google Drive)
- Organise your main file source
- Sync your passwords
Declutter Your Social Media
- Unfollow people that do not add value to your life
- Unfollow tags, groups, pages and lists
- Remove notifications
- Organize your social media life and focus on what brings you joy
6. Declutter Your Home To Clear Your Mind
Clutter has many forms and dimensions. It can manifest itself in a physical form when your floordrobe gives you anxiety, a digital form when after installing another app your smartphone got slower, an emotional form when you lose control over racing thoughts and unwanted memories, a broken but (almost certainly) fixable clutter that you just cannot get rid of, a sentimental clutter that makes it hard to fall asleep at night… you name it.
But one thing is for sure: no matter what kind of clutter you’re dealing with it can easily make navigating your life much harder than ever it needs to be. Because clutter causes stress, steals your energy, gives you anxiety, and makes your life much more complex than it ever needs to be.
Your internal world and your external personal space together represent the field of your being. Or in other words, your personal space is the externalization of your current state of mind and vice versa. That’s the reason why you may feel anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed when your surroundings are messy and cluttered. But when you do clutter control, you feel better right away.
You deserve inner peace and organized personal space. Staying in a clean and decluttered environment is what your mind, body, and spirit need for making a fresh start in the new year. So if you want to make the most of the fresh start of a new year take time to declutter your mental and physical space.
Places You Can Sell Your Clutter
- Etsy here
- Poshmark here
- Marketplace on Facebook
- Amazon - declutter and sell on Amazon
- eBay - declutter and sell the things you don’t need on eBay
Free Declutter Worksheets
7. Organize Your Life With Written Lists
According to scientific research, our short-term memory can hold approximately seven separate items for less than half of minute. This is due to the fact that human brains are not designed to remember things but to process them. So if you’re having a hard time memorizing multiple information at once or you „easily” forget what’s on your never-ending to-do list, it’s because it is simply impossible.
Relying on your memory is a quick way to get overwhelmed and confused. Not to mention that, if you don’t write things down you will simply forget them. To prevent that you should make a list or multiple lists. The rule is simple: if you don’t write it, you will forget it.
Keeping things out of your head will help you to organize your thoughts and capture what’s truly important. A written list is an amazing tool to determine your most important tasks, categorize your to-do’s, and organize your information. And you know what’s even better? That you can make lists about anything. Seriously, about anything. I, for instance, make my master to-do list, my not-to-do list, shopping list, grocery shopping list, enjoyment list, booklist, audiobook list, bucket list, declutter list, etc. Yeah, I know I am an obsessive list-maker but I love it and my brain loves it!
Best Posts On Self-Care
- Top 9 Self-Care Activities For Busy People
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- How To Create A Simple Self-Care Routine That Will Make You Thrive + Free Printables & Checklists!
- Natural and Non-Toxic Personal Care Products To Indulge Yourself With For The Ultimate Self-Care Ritual.
- 7 Steps to Detox Your Mental Wellbeing. – Cleanse Your Mind for a More Positive Life
- Everything Starts In Your Head – 12 Healthy Rules For a Strong Mental Health.
- Wellness Weekend Challenge: 10 Ways To Reset, Relax And Reboot.
8. Schedule Life Admin Day
Another important thing to consider while resetting and refreshing for the new year is to do a life admin day. Of course, it does not have to be a full day of tacking your to-do list of tasks you were actively procrastinating on. Depending on how many things you need to do, want to do or you should do before the end of the year you can block an appropriate amount of time.
Getting started on the tasks that you’ve been actively avoiding may not be the easiest thing to do but with the right strategy you can tie up loose ends fairly effectively. Especially if you batch similar tasks together that will help you enter a flow state but it will also save your time and energy. So make your future self a favor and schedule a life admin day to finally get your “admin type of” to-do list done.
- What is something you have been procrastinating about for a while to do?
- What tasks are making you delay completing them?
- What things from your to-do list you’ve been putting off?
- What tasks around your house you’ve been avoiding?
- What errands you need to get done but you’ve never felt like doing?
Life Admin Type Of Tasks
- Do the errands
- Respond to important emails
- Schedule appointments (that you’ve been avoiding)
- Schedule a health check
- Manage your memberships and subscriptions
- Organize your finances
- Update your Insurance policies
- Take a look at your personal banking
- Organise your tax
9. Cleanse Yourself From Negative Energy
2021 was a tough year for all of us. There’s no doubt about that. The amount of shocking, completely unexpected, and deeply upsetting things that happened in the course of just a few months it’s just incredible. I don’t know about you but I feel like I am in a science fiction movie. Really, a few months ago did you imagine us all going through all of this craziness?
2021 was a year of discomfort, confusion, chaos, and massive change. But it was also a year of getting back to the basics, tapping into the resourcefulness, and thinking outside the box. So I guess, we can say that it wasn’t all bad.
Now 2021 is finally coming to an end. We can take a deep breath and start building a better future for all of us. But, first, we need to get rid of all the negative energy that surrounds us. Then, we can start fresh in the new year. Because to be able to start the new year on a positive note, you need to clear the negative energy. So think about all these negative things and toxic people you don’t want in your life anymore and eliminate them from your life.
Get rid of physical and emotional clutter, toxic ingredients from your diet and cosmetic products, and toxic people that do not add value to your life. Leave everything that you don’t need behind. Cleanse your mind, body, and spirit to make the most of start fresh in the next year.
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Stay positive, be mindful and reset your life for a successful 2021!
xo Kate
