Photographed by Ziga Mihelcic for Vogue Arabia, July/August 2018.
Forget meaningless resolutions and setting result driven goals this January, instead taking some much needed time for self-care by following health and personal empowerment coach Heidi Jones’ five step plan.
1. Set positive intentions
Each morning instead of writing a do to list or setting yourself up with depriving habits (say good-bye to fad diets) start your day with a clear positive intention. The act of identifying your intention and writing it down will make it much more likely that you will live out the intention during the day. For example, if you want to lose weight this month, your positive intention could be ‘I will choose the healthiest choices available today’.
2. Take it one step at a time
It’s easy to want to go full steam ahead at this time of year, motivation is high and everyone is quoting ‘New year, new me’. However, this ‘all in’ approach to change quickly leads to overwhelming and falling off the wagon before the end of the month. Change needs to happen gradually, consistently and over a period of time to really make a positive impact on your life. Focus on taking one step you can do each day and build up from there.
3. Reflect on what you do well
Self-reflection is a great strategy for keeping yourself accountable with new habits, staying motivated to keep on track and maintaining a positive mind-set. At the end of each day simply start by writing down three things you did well that day, use the acronym WWW (What Went Well) and then identify one thing that could be better tomorrow EBI (Even Better If).
4. Create a new self-care habit
Integrate a new habit into your daily routine that boosts your health or happiness. The simpler the action the quicker it will turn into a habit. For example, starting your day with a glass of water is a great addition to improving your health; this is a simple action and can be set up by having a glass of water by your bed. Cooking your dinner five times a week is a much more challenging task and would take a lot longer to commit to which can be demotivating when we fail. The best way to start is to break a habit down, cook one meal a week, then add in another until you get to five.
5. Ditch the negative self-talk
Falling into a spiral of negative self-talk tremendously affects how you live your life. Switch the negative internal chat to a happier and more forgiving perception. When you hear the negative self-talk, say “cancel cancel” followed by a positive, more accepting comment.
Health and personal empowerment coach Heidi Jones has been empowering her clients with tools for achieving optimal health and improved lifestyle habits for the past four years. Her coaching methods focus on implementing preventative strategies, developing a growth mind-set, and action based self-awareness techniques.
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