Enjoy this transcription of this week’s podcast episode!

Happy New Year! It is finally 2021. How are we feeling about this? Excited? Are you so happy to leave 2020 behind? That is what I have seen all over the place. Regardless, I hope that you had the best holidays ever. And I just want to say thank you as well for your understanding, with me taking last week off from podcasting.

It just felt like I really needed to take that one week off and enjoy just being with my family and focusing on traveling home safely. And it was great. It was perfect. It was exactly what we needed. And I am personally super super stoked for the New Year! And I hope you are too. I hope this episode this week helps you be really excited for this new year, so that you can make it whatever it is that you want it to be.

So naturally with the new year, there is a lot of talk around New Year’s resolutions, right? There are always discussions all over the place happening about New Year’s resolutions. To make a resolution or not, right?

I’ve seen several schools of thought. I’ll share just a few. These are certainly not all of them. Whenever I read about discussions on Facebook threads, on Instagram posts, or on Tik Tok, or in person (sometimes that’s the thing too, even with the pandemic haha), there’s the classic New Year’s resolution. You know, where you set a really big goal at the beginning of the year.

Or you can set one like what I saw one of my friends talk about, that I actually really liked; where she’ll set a goal that will take about a year to achieve, like a 200 day workout program. Something like that. So it’s not necessarily a big goal. It’s just a long Time kind of goal, which I thought was kind of cool!

Or you can simply revisit goals that you have already previously set and make sure that you’re still on track for them and make any necessary adjustments.

You can simply choose a word of the year. That’s one that I have seen that is really popular this year, and I love that. I used to do that every semester, back when I was in college. You know, back in the day. I would choose a word for every semester, and I really loved that. I haven’t done that in a while, and that’s one that is kind of close to my heart a little bit, so it made me happy to see a lot of people doing that this year.

And then there’s the school of thought of just not creating any kind of resolution; not getting into that realm at all. And I’ve seen people choose into that for a few different reasons. I see one being that they don’t want to set themselves up for failure; maybe you tend to be someone who lives from an all or nothing mindset, and so setting a big ol’ resolution without having done the ground work (there’s a lot of things that could go behind that), it can often set someone up for failure.

And failure is a whole other thing, right? If you haven’t already, go back and listen to my episode about failure. So that’s one reason. Or because maybe you buckle under the pressure. Or maybe it feels too mainstream for you. You know, maybe you’re one of those cool cats who just can’t swallow anything that’s mainstream. I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s actually a thing haha.

Maybe it just feels like there’s too much focus on physical health and it doesn’t feel resonant. So those are several reasons that I have seen people talk about why they don’t do any kind of New Year’s resolution.

These are only a few examples of of reasons that I have heard of whether to or to not create some kind of New Year’s resolution. And the thing with all of that is that there’s no right answer. I’m not here to tell you whether you should or shouldn’t create a New Year’s resolution. I can’t possibly do that for you over a podcast.

Now, if you wanna have a discussion with me so that I can help coach you through the decision of whether or not to make a resolution of some kind, how to recreate that resolution, what kind of resolution is going to be best for you, then I’m here. Send me an email. Catch me on Instagram. You know, reach out. And I would be more than happy to have that discussion with you.

But because there is no right answer, I cannot tell you right now what you should do. And in that thread, there’s also no single way for you to approach the New Year. Every year of your life, it’s gonna change because you’re gonna change, whether you like it or not. The only way that you cannot change is by dying. And even then, your body will change because it will decompose! You always are changing; things are always changing.

Even a rock is always changing. Because wind and rain and gravel and all these other things wear it down, and make it change its shape. The rock might not be doing anything but the outside circumstances are. I read this quote earlier:

Change equals growth if we do it readily or grief if we do it reluctantly.

So through change, if we choose to do it – if we’re open to and we are an active participant of that change, then we will experience growth and progress. But if we resist the change and we’re reluctant and hardheaded and stubborn and dig our heels in, it’s going to cause us a lot of grief.

So how did I get on this tangent? I’m not really sure, but I just feel like you really needed to hear that today. Moral of the story, we’re always changing, which means we can’t just pick one way to handle New Year’s resolutions and expect to be able to apply that every year of our life moving forward every year.

When we come to this time of the year, we get to reevaluate and decide what makes sense for us this year and what doesn’t; because that’s never been the case for anything ever. There has never, ever been anything that’s a one size fit all. That’s not how any of this works. Not with fitness and nutrition, not with how much sleep we need, not with how many kids we should have, not with haircuts that look good on a person, tolerance to different weather conditions.

I am someone who would much rather be too hot than too cold, and I have often been told that I am crazy for that. I’ve been finding a few people who agree with me on this, but most people look at me like I’ve got two heads, so if you’re my people, you let me know.

Stop thinking that just because something worked for someone else, it means you’re a failure. If it doesn’t work for you, stop it. Stop. You are so specifically designed the way that you are for a purpose, and it’s time for you to start exploring and discovering and what that means for you. Be an active participant in your life and stop trying to participate in someone else’s life.

Just because it’s working for someone else doesn’t mean that it needs to work for you. It doesn’t mean that it should work for you. Celebrate that it works for someone else! That’s great! Some people do great setting a big ol’ goal at the beginning of the year. Celebrate that for them! Why not? That’s awesome! That’s great that they have found what works for them!

And then get curious and creative and find out what works for you. So I’m sure you’ve heard the statistic. I should have looked up the number before I recorded this, but the number doesn’t really matter. But statistically, most people give up on their New Year’s resolution by Valentine’s Day, or have failed their resolution by Valentine’s Day. We hear this. I’ve heard this every year for a long time.

I see other coaches who utilize that, and companies who will create a product to help people not quit on their New Year’s resolution. Which is all well and good. They’re all serving beautiful purposes and they have beautiful intents, and they’re doing really great work.

That said, I have a question in response to the fact that most people “give up” on their New Year’s resolution by Valentine’s Day.

Is that a problem? We don’t know the whole story. Those statistics, they don’t show the story. They don’t show the reasoning behind it. They don’t show what happened. Maybe there were new factors that were presented. Maybe someone had a New Year’s resolution to get a promotion in their job, but they were offered a whole new job opportunity, a whole career change. So if that were the case and they accepted that new career change, they wouldn’t need that other resolution because it’s no longer relevant, right?

Or maybe there’s a woman out there who had a goal to lose a certain amount of weight, and then found out that she was pregnant, and that she didn’t need to lose weight at this time. That wasn’t relevant for her, or healthy for her.

You see how that works, right? Relevance is important here. Context is important here. And maybe it was something just simple as well. A few weeks in, and it just didn’t feel right anymore. There doesn’t even necessarily need to be a reason behind it, there doesn’t need to be evidence externally showing why they should give up on that goal. Maybe it just simply didn’t resonate anymore. And the goal needed to change or just be dropped.

See, and the thing is, none of that could have been discovered if the resolution had never even been made. Now again, there’s several ways to go about setting a resolution. Some which may be right, some which may be not for you this year. But the thing is, all throughout life, having something to work toward it gives us the opportunity to explore what is and isn’t right for us, what does and doesn’t make sense for us.

So those people, if they had never made those resolutions, maybe they never would have gotten to where they are now. Maybe it gave them exactly the detour that they needed to take them where they needed to go, even if it looks way different than they had in mind.

And the thing with the new year is it’s got so much hype around it, right? “New Year, New Me”, such a cliche. And, yeah, I have also really liked that at times – this year, I don’t – but in the past I have. And there’s parties, there’s products, there’s events. There’s all the posts, all the reminiscing. There’s so much hype around the New Year.

But the thing is, the New year is only special because we believe it is. We, as a society, have placed a special meaning on this particular date, this particular time of the year.

Imagine you were living out in the wilderness; somewhere that has no access to the Internet or calendars or society. Imagine you didn’t have any kind of contact with anyone or anything. You’re just out living your best life. You’ve never been part of a big group of people. You don’t really have a calendar, except for maybe what you’ve created on your own based off of your own observations.

You would never ever know that there was something special about this day. So, knowing this, you now know that you get to decide how much meaning you want to give to that day to this time of year And what you want that meaning to be. You have all the power; you get to choose. Isn’t that amazing? Just because everyone else is hyping it up like crazy doesn’t mean that you have to.

Or maybe you’re kind of surrounded by people who aren’t hyping it up, and you want to. Imagine there’s a dial in front of you. A hype dial. A New Year’s hype dial. Make it whatever color you want. You can bedazzle it. You can keep it plain. You’ve got this dial. In fact, make it a whole dial board, alright? You get to adjust all of those dials to make the new year exactly what you wanted to be; to make it as special as you want it to be, or as mundane as you want it to be.

You can place whatever meaning you want on it. Put whatever stickers you want on it. Do you like having a fresh start? Do you like the idea of having the New Year be a blank slate and starting over? And what is the purpose of having that fresh start? Is having a fresh start really encouraging and energizing uplifting for you? Or is it maybe really discouraging and frustrating and overwhelming? Do you want a fresh start because you feel discouraged? Identify what’s underneath.

There’s a lot of people I’ve talked to who initially thought that they liked the idea of a fresh start. But it turns out they only wanted that fresh start because they felt like they were a failure. And it turns out, oh yeah, failure is not a problem! Failure is not a bad thing! And you don’t have to start over!

You could just reevaluate and then continue on with everything that you have learned. So if that’s you, then maybe you don’t actually need a fresh start. Maybe you just need some different approaches.

You could just have a moment of reinvigorating what is already working.

You could make it mean that it’s time to celebrate what went well in the last year, and that’s it. That’s it. Just a celebration of the previous year.

Or it could be a time to write out all the things you have to look forward to in the new year. Maybe one of your favorite authors is releasing a new book in the new year, and you’re so excited about it! Put a note of it in your calendar. Have a reminder. Maybe there are family events you’re looking forward to, or a new season of your favorite TV show (looking at you, Brooklyn 99). Maybe going to a new restaurant that you’ve been wanting to try. Just list out all of these things that you have to look forward to in the New year. How fun would that be? And that has nothing to do with setting goals. It has nothing to do with having a fresh start.

Another idea that I thought was kind of interesting (I gleaned all of these ideas through reading Facebook posts, and Google, and all sorts of things, so I wish I had kept track of who to credit for all of these, so I’m sorry if this is you, let me know if you want credit haha): you could expand by paying attention to a new area of your life by tracking it! And you’re not going for any specific results, necessarily. It’s just kind of a fun way to curate curiosity. And you know how big of a fan I am of curiosity, because when you introduce curiosity, it takes the place of criticism.

So, you could just start tracking how you spend your time, how you spend your money. You could track your weight without the the intent to change it, right? Just tracking it. You could track the items that you purchased, items that you’ve donated. Anything, literally anything you could track. How often you do laundry, how many books you own. Just track. It’s really interesting to track things that you haven’t paid attention to a while because it can shine a flashlight on it. And then if you do happen to see something that you would like to do about it, go for it. And if not, great!

And here’s the thing that the thing with “starting over” at the new year. I hear some people talking about wanting to start over. To start fresh and start clean. And maybe that’s you. If you’re one of those people who likes the idea of being able to start over in the new year, I might pop your bubble a little bit. I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable. I mean, not really. I’m not really sorry, because it’s my job to make you uncomfortable.

We don’t ever actually get to start over. That’s not a thing, because we don’t know how to go back in time. We don’t have that ability, and that’s a good thing, because if we started over – I mean, think about a game, you know, on the GameBoy or whatever. What do all the new kids play on now? Nintendo Switch?

When you hit start over, or it’s game over and you start all over. Do you get to keep all of the things that you gained through that previous game? No. They’re wiped away.

So if we could start over, we would lose everything that we learned. All of that knowledge, all of that experience. So why would we really want to start over? What’s the point? There would be no point, because we would just lose everything. So instead of starting over, we could just kind of hit the refresh button on our efforts.

Do you see my point? Tell me, have you felt a shift in the collective energy lately? This is something that I have been noticing a lot. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about this, and I have personally felt that a lot lately. There’s just been kind of a lot of talk about taking personal responsibility for our for our growth, trusting our inner guidance system, cultivating our personal gifts and talents and and strengths, you know, stuff like that.

And it just feels like there has been a greater emphasis placed on the importance of taking intentional time to really listen to ourselves. So a few questions that I would have you ask yourself are, and journal on these! Meditate on these!

What do you need right now? What is going to serve your highest good? What is your highest good? And what meaning do you want the new year to have?

It’s all you. No one else’s answer matters, because they’re not living your life. They are not you. You are You, so you need to listen to You, because you have everything that you need to live the life that you desire.

You are given your desires because you are meant for those desires. Your desires are just waiting for you to claim them And whatever approach you choose to take for the new year, whether it’s anything that I have mentioned today or something else, first of all, I would actually really love for you to reach out. Let me know what approach you are taking because I’m super curious to hear the different ways people are are going about this. It’s so fascinating to me. And I would just love to geek out with you and be excited with you.

So whatever approach you take, here are some thoughts that I would just really love to offer to you. So whichever ones resonate with you, hold on to them, internalize them, integrate with them.

Prioritize yourself in a way that cultivates unconditional self love. Because if you’re if you don’t feel like you’re enough right now, if you’re not enough right now, what makes you think that tucking more accomplishments under your belt will be what makes you enough? Those aren’t you; those accomplishments, they’re not you. They’re things that you have done. You are You, your accomplishments are not You. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.

You are the only one who decides whether you’re good enough or not. No one else decides that, and I’m gonna give you a little spoiler: you’re already more than enough. You’re not just enough. You are more than enough, whether you believe it or not. You already have that innate enough-ness; it’s as simple as making the decision that you believe that you’re enough. You don’t have to do anything to be enough. There’s no extra work involved to Be enough.

You simply have to start Being enough and believing that you’re enough; having that certainty that you are enough. That’s allowed, it’s encouraged. You don’t need do anything extra. Just start Doing it to start Being it and believing it all. And I know that that’s really simplified, and you might be meeting some resistance to that thought. And that’s okay.

So to help you kind of work through it, I would have you ask yourself: if I was already enough, what would I be doing? What would I be wearing? What would I be reading, eating, saying, thinking…? And start to really immerse yourself in that energy, and then live from that energy.

That right there, my friend. That is how you Be. Because you can do a lot of those things right now. Maybe not everything, but you can do a lot. And if you do everything from that energy, you will start to discover just how enough you are.

And once you have the peace of knowing that you’re already more than enough, just as you are right now, you’re going to find that you meet so much less resistance as you take action toward whatever it is that you desire. You are gifted with desires. They are a gift. Did you know that? They’re a gift to help you fulfill the purpose that you were sent here for. To help you live the life that you want, and will enjoy; because when you are living a life that you want and enjoy and have desired, that benefits everyone! And that’s a whole other podcast episode.

For now, just know that. It’s about starting with the inner work so that you can allow the outer work to become so much easier. It’s like making a grocery list. When it comes to the grocery shopping, you basically have two options, right? You can either take the time and minimal effort to just make a list. You know, look through your kitchen, look at what you’re having for dinner, and make a list before you go to the store – before you even leave the house, and have your shopping trip be super efficient, super easy.

Or you can let your ego take over, telling you that you don’t need to make a list first, that you’ll remember everything. And then run all over the store back and forth, up and down the aisles, going through aisles four or five times, and have it take twice as long and be 10 times more stressful because you’re wondering if you got everything that you needed. And maybe even having to go back to the store another time or two in order to get everything right.

Do you feel the difference in the energy between those two? One way takes a little bit more forethought, you know, more front work. But the second one took way longer, way more mental energy, way more physical energy, and was much less efficient.

So that right there. That is why you need to take the time to do the inner work before the outer action. Because as you do that, that is going to let the outer action be easy.

And as a matter of fact, that is the theme this month for Elevate Your Life Insiders. And the insiders that are in there right now? They helped me come up with this theme. I have been listening to them, and through our discussions, this came up and they all just kind of held onto it and really loved it. It has resonated deeply, and they’ve already learned so much from it.

If you’re new here, Elevate Your Life Insiders is a group coaching membership experience. There’s a whole lot that I provide for you inside this membership. I’m not gonna get into all right now, because you can go to the website and see what it’s all about. But our first coaching call of the year is tomorrow, January 7th. Tomorrow afternoon. I would just absolutely be tickled to see your face there; to see you coming for the inner work. Prioritizing yourself so much so that you can Be enough. So you can learn how to be enough. You can learn how to believe that you are more than enough.

So come, let me show you how you can absolutely let your life be easy and fulfilling. Come learn how to reduce your inner drama, so that you can let go of unnecessary resistance. You don’t need any more resistance. Stop it. You don’t need to create anymore. Okay? I gotchu.

And so whatever approach you’re choosing to take for the new year, whether you’re choosing, whatever meaning you’re choosing to place on this time of year, or if you’re not choosing to place any meeting on it. Either way, becoming an Insider is the most self compassionate thing you can do for yourself right now.

Give yourself your best chance for an incredible, uplifting, and leveled up year. I’m so excited for you and I’ll see you there. Talk to you next week.