Happy New You!

By Kris Pitcher

How will you focus on the things that are important to you this year? How will you begin to put the pieces together and align what's important to you? It's pretty simple, as I've said before. Let's look at a few things to ring in the new you!

New You!

What is important to you? Defining your values is the beginning to any journey in life. If you have plans to make it a healthier year, this is where you start. Get out a pen and paper and scribble some things down. There is no wrong answer...and there is no test.

If you are able to define your top five things, the next question is: Why is that important to you? If you told me it's important to you to be healthy and fit and I asked you why, what would you say? Is it important so you can play with your kids? Do your job? Enjoy your hobbies on the weekends?

Why is it important? Is it so you are taken seriously in the board room? Is it so you age more gracefully? Is it to balance out your hormones? No wrong answers.

Taking time to figure out what you value and why those things are important to you is critical to mapping out a plan you'll be successful at. For example, it's important for me to get adequate rest. That is important to me for recovery from exercise, for migraine management, and for my mental health.

Next, we think about what will we do to create good habits around that "value". For me, I will create and stick to a bed time that most 5th graders would thumb their nose at. I'll be in bed by 8:30 pm. Why on earth would I do this when prime time TV isn't even on air yet! Because I value it.

The alarm rings at 4:30 am and I've gotten my eight hours of sleep for adequate recovery from my workouts, enough to manage my migraines and enough that I'm not crying in the corner from feeling too tired.

So, once you know what's important to you, why it is important, and what you will do to create a situation where you can make that happen...you are already achieving your goals. You don't even have to work at it. You're just doing it. Because it's important to you.

This is how you create your happy new you this year. It works when you do the work by asking yourself the hard questions. It works because you gain clarity about what is important to you and why. Go ahead, have an "a ha!" moment. Happy New You!