How to ACTUALLY Achieve Your New Year's Goals

Hellooooo 2021, you have been long awaited! With each New Year often comes new goals, a new-found hope & the eagerness to make some REAL change. Most of the time, however, it is exactly this eagerness that actually STOPS us dead in our tracks. Why? We become so fixated on the end game and our VISIBLE results that we actually lose sight of the PROCESS it requires to get there. This desire for instantaneous gratification works AGAINST our intentions. Not only does this leave us feeling hopeLESS, but it often brings us to this “fork-in-the-road,” questioning if the goal is truly something we want to pursue, or if we should just abandon it altogether.

The bad news: it is your own responsibility for where you ARE at. The good news: it is your own responsibility for where you CAN be.

As a whole, our society tends to OUTSOURCE health, relying on professionals and prescription medications to “fix” any and all symptoms. While there is a place for Western medicine, don’t get me wrong, we have depended on others instead of learning to depend on OURSELVES. To be candid, NOBODY knows you and your body better than YOU do. It is this INTUITION that we need to tune into, to rely on and to guide us towards our healthiest self.

In order to recalibrate our intuition, however, we must take steps to create AWARENESS of ourself and our surroundings. THIS is where our goals come into play. When establishing your goals, you should keep in mind that we are HOLISTIC beings, meaning everything in our life, our mind, body and spirit are all interconnected and regulated by one another. If one part of us feels off or out of the norm, then the other parts will be affected as well. Most physical symptoms can actually be traced back to IMBALANCES in our day-to-day life. Whether that is our thoughts and emotions, our patterns and habits, or our relationships, career, spirituality, physical activity, and sleep — they all play larger role and their OVERLAP can be significant.

When setting my goals for 2021 I made SURE to include a variety of elements present in my life, so my goals could work FOR me, not against me. To ensure they were well-rounded, I chose to incorporate the following areas of my life: spirituality, health, physical activity, relationships, social life, career, education, finances, home environment, home cooking, creativity and joy. What I want you to notice most here is that they aren't all health-oriented or focused on "losing weight" and "getting in shape," but they will definitely all impact my overall WELL-BEING. The KEY is to choose areas that RESONATE with YOU. Many of us tend to be overly ambitious at the beginning of a new year, therefore, I highly recommend picking a REALISTIC amount of areas that you can focus on at a time.

When forming your action plan for reaching your goals, that is the process required to reach them, choose actions that are SMALL and that you can commit to doing CONSISTENTLY. Taking BABY steps towards your goals is how LASTING change develops. Just like you don’t become unhealthy overnight, you also don’t become healthy overnight. If you really aspire to make the changes you set out to achieve, then you must learn the value of DELAYED gratification. It is the day-to-day, the in-between, the time from when you set the goal and when you realize the goal, that builds the foundation for success.

Wherever you are at in your journey is okay — it is YOUR journey. Don’t compare yourself to others, just keep STRIVING for what is true to you and YOUR goals. Living life to the fullest means living life for YOU, not those around you. Release your fears, open your heart and FORGIVE yourself when things don’t go as planned. Be consistent, be present and tune in to YOU. Focus on taking the first step, then take the next step, and so on. It is the LITTLE things that make ALL the difference in the end. Take ownership of your life and your life will reward you. ACTION INSPIRES MORE ACTION.

Xx,

Leah Kutsch

P.S. Keeping IIN Touch