Is the idea of a new year new you pressing upon you?

12 Jan

Written By Punteha van Terheyden

Life coach Alison Langrick | Leicestershire (Copy)

Is complete transformation really necessary?

Or can we all live with ourselves enough to create small changes and meaningful outcomes?

2023 has a lot to live up to – it is a year when we are hoping to banish the pandemic to an even more distant past, when we want to feel financial gains instead of focusing on the losses associated with rising living and fuel costs, and it is the year when we want peace across the world…

A tall order for everyone!

Typically, when a new year strikes, we take the opportunity to cast doubt on the decisions we have made which haven’t reaped the rewards we expected. And with this reflection, we often throw everything out and regroup our ideas into a new, hopefully more effective model of being.

BUT…

By doing this we can forget who we really are.

We expect ourselves to be able to run a full marathon by the end of January, having given up eating meat and drinking alcohol, as well as taking cold showers or swims every day. Which is all a perfect recipe for life – IF we have been living and working towards this outcome for the past 6 months.

Our vision of success is so often rooted in comparing our lives to the lives of others that we forget to see just how far we have come already on our own journey. We often don’t account for the daily successes and trials which cross our paths, expected or unexpected, and we consider ourselves to be failures if we haven’t measured up to the lives of those we see as successful. How do we know they are successful?

Maybe what we can do, which would be more meaningful and beneficial to our selves, is to really figure out what we THINK and BELIEVE success is.

Is there a specific way to measure our own success or do we always have to use someone else’s guidelines?

To make truly meaningful change we must first understand what we know about ourselves to be true.

From there we can decide what it is we would like to see enhanced within ourselves and how our lives can be improved.

It is only then that we can take small daily, or scheduled actions towards these enhancements.

Showing up to our daily routines gives us a clue as to what we are capable of but challenging ourselves to become even more capable is where true transformation lies.

Happy New Year – and Happy Old But Transformational You!