The New Year is perceived as a great chance to start afresh and to see your life in a new light. I believe in evaluating your life at least once a month and preferably once a week.
How is your life going?
I ask all those I coach to look closely at their lives a couple of times a year. Let’s reflect on last year. Grab a pen and paper and write a bit about what happened last year. Be as objective and compassionate as you can. Be gentle with yourself. Write down and process feelings that may come up because you are doing this. Our egos react with intense emotions plus denial when examined. Persist, focus, work deeply and be kind to yourself.
Take the time to question and challenge your own assumptions about life. Focus on working out what your life is actually about.What are your lifes goals? What issues keep on coming up? This is not what you or others think or imagine they should be. Why do you think you are on earth? I believe we are all on earth to learn and grow. Handling our issues, hangups and emotional wounds are a part of our purpose in life.
Write down the answers to these questions:
- What were your goals for last year? Did you make them on your own or with your coach or support friends?
- Did you achieve or progress towards them? Try putting down what percentage of achievement was made. eg if you were working with me on a health problem, what amount of relief did you achieve? If you were working with weight loss, what percentage of your goal did you achieve? If it relates to depression, how did last year go? If your goal was a relationship or work related matter, how did it go?
- What worked and what failed?
- Did you break the agreements that you made with yourself or your coach or mentor? Why?
- What area of your life did you refuse to look at and change? It is useful to see where you are in denial.
- What are you running away and hiding from?Why?
- How much do you sabotage your progress?
- What is your biggest avoidance strategy?
- Where did procrastination step in? Most of my clients say they procrastinate when it comes to doing internal growth work, or doing exercise, breaking bad habits, or eating healthy food.
- How did you work with your journal last year? Setting goals and writing in your journal daily point you in the right direction and ensure that you keep going for it. Your journal helps provide momentum and clarity. Establishing “me” time is vital. Do not confuse this with being selfish. I find that journalling helps me own my ego or dark side. It helps me to break the domination of this negative internal tyrant.
- Did you step out of your comfort zone last year and make the task of inner work/ growth a priority. Inner growth and learning are the fundamental purpose in life for all of us. Growth is vital in our work life and careers. It is also the lifeblood of relationships and our self nurturing and health programs. It is the sign of a spiritual being having a human experience, instead of a human being trying to be spiritual.
- How did the holiday season go for you. Did you get enough rest? Did you party too much or too little?
- Did the holidays leave you rested and refreshed? If not, what did you refuse to do that you needed to do?
- Did you try to create a balance between work, rest and enjoyment during the year that works for you?
- How is your health doing?
- What steps did you take to improve your health this month?
- What did you fail to do for your health and well being?
- Celebrate all those health and life improvements that you have made recently.
- Praise yourself for any work done on yourself, your health, your career, your relationships and personal growth.
EFT for goal setting:
If you have got this far it may well be time to do some EFT/tapping on the situation to center yourself and deal with the anger or any other emotion that may have emerged because of the work you are doing. Perhaps you needed to do EFT from the moment you began reading this blog. For those who know how to do EFT I am going to give you a few setup phrases that you repeat while tapping on the side of your hand or karate chop spot:
Even though this subject brings up my low self esteem and self judgement,I love and approve of myself relentlessly.
Even though this exercise brings up………
- Frustration
- Resistance
- Laziness
- Perfectionism
- Procrastination
- Self Criticism
- Any other negative emotion
I accept myself ,my feelings and my life as a work in progress.
Even though I usually fail at what I do, I now choose to see failure as part of the learning process. I choose success over failure.
Even though I resist having goals due to fear of failure,commitment or inner rebellion, I accept myself and how I feel anyway.
Even though I experience inner rebellion, I know that my skills and maturity grow by responding to challenges.
Even though I have issues about success or expecting to achieve goals, I choose to feel optimistic about my life and go with the flow.
Look at what is happening in your life and what is going on with your health. Look at what you wrote about it and process your feelings about it.You may need to tap some more.
Tapping dispels negative emotions and beliefs. It also anchors positive beliefs in the mind. Tapping provides relief from the states of confusion and overwhelm that tend to arise when we deal with our internal emotional baggage. Whenever I am in the middle of an emotional eruption, I try and tap. Tapping has helped me beat sugar and junk food addiction. It helps me exercise strength, self control, discipline and the ability to let go in any difficult circumstance. It is a boost to positive resources like strength, focus and commitment.