New Year, New You?

It just seems like yesterday, that we were closing our accounts, projects for the year and making plans for a brand new year. Before we knew, Christmas, New Year, and now with the Lunar New Year ending, we will be welcoming February with Thaipusam, Valentine's and then with Raya, closing off the first quarter of the year.

How have you been? Were you able to take a break, have a breather and reflect on your life? I am not talking about career progress or transitions necessarily, as that is but one part of our lives. One that tends to have quite a spillover affect onto other areas of our lives.

In fact, just minutes ago, Susan David, Ph.D. , psychologist and emotional agility guru shared how we tend to most often associate our identity with our job (which is absolutely not the same), and that we need to separate our role from our identity to be more grounded and not allow one aspect of the self to overwhelm the rest, if I may put it that way.

Emotional check-in's are crucial, a temperature check to know how you are truly doing. From there, be able to navigate the current circumstances and reality, evaluating what you can do about it, should that be an area of concern of any kind- improvement, change, continue? However, for that to happen, there needs to be intent and action. The initial action required at least is to pause and reflect. What a better time as we walk into a new year with a our plans of all sizes that we call resolutions!

My formula that I would like to pursue yet again this year would be, in sequence,

1. Carry out my reflections. I am using the "Wheel of Life" as a guiding tool, to have a comprehensive view of the different areas of life. There is also an online version now that you can use for free, check it out in this link on Noomii.com. There are also different variations of the wheel, that includes different areas of life. I manually draw the wheel and include all areas that are significant to me. Manually drawing it helps me better. But of course, if you are more inclined with digital methods, there are app versions and downloadable worksheets too.
2. Build my resolutions. Only, I would identify what I would like to have happen this year. These are broad items that may or may not have clear pathways that would lead to them. This may lead you to researching these interests better, and I encourage you to do so. By doing so, your resolution may evolve based on the information you have gathered. This helps with prioritising then what would be more reasonable and important for you.
3. Breaking them down into habits. I will now identify specific habits that will lead me to the desired outcome. This includes frequency of this habit taking place in a month, week or day. To support this, I will choose to leverage on existing mechanisms to build the habit. Example of mechanisms would be my personal Google Calendar that is synced to my phone, Fitbit tracker, stickies for miniscule one-time tasks and etc. This helps contribute to a system that is effective.
4. Have conversations. I love having conversations with trusted family members, friends and members of the society who are skilled in specific areas that I need counsel. For example, I may chat with a coach to understand how I can leverage on my strengths vs navigating challenges. Or, seek advise from a friend who is more senior in a particular field or who has done it before, from the capacity of being a mentee. The best ones are holding conversations with people who bring in completely different views to yours, that may provide you better insights, and even gaps and opportunities that you might have missed your lenses.
5. Check-in quarterly. This is when I pull out my sheet again to revisit what I have drawn out, reflect and update my progress. Remember, life happens! Therefore, I will choose to weed out or adapt to circumstances and changes.

As James Clear puts it, "you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Habits are like the atoms of our lives, each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement."

If there is one thing you could takeaway from reading this, I hope that would be for you to block 24-48 hours to do nothing but this, to begin with. How you do this however, is entirely up for you to explore and experiment. The effort needs to go into setting the intent, laying out the insights and putting in the work. As you repeat what you have laid-out, you are bound to build habits that will support you in achieving your resolutions, hence a more meaningful life.

A note of caution, to thread this path with kindness and compassion. Remember that you are only human. Hold yourself accountable to reasonable actions and time frames and frequencies. It's not the magnitude or the speed but the consistency that brings your further from where you are and closer to your desired reality.

As for me, I am a work-in-progress! I have to also admit that I am far from being perfect or good at this. However, the fact that I do the 4 steps above has helped me, and I hope it will help you too. In the year 2023, what I have done is to speak to a few trusted people about things that I am concerned about, I would like to do, to do more of and so on. I have also established a deadline for myself, to complete this process by 14th of February, as a self-love exercise.

This live, we live once. The magnitude to which we choose to lead or by led by anything other than ourselves is something we need to decide.

So, tell me. What are your thoughts about this? Any questions? I am happy to chat about this if you'd like- write to me.

Wishing you all the best with your self-development!