New year, new you. How many times have we heard that? Or woken up on 1^st January (ok, maybe the 2nd or 3^rd) full of good intentions to make changes to certain things and lead a healthy lifestyle. Only to have given up by the middle of the month, having slipped back into our old ways once work and the school run swung back into action.

Old habits, as they say, die hard.

This year it’s the start of a whole new decade and the pressure to conform to the expectations of diets and unrealistic goals is even more present.

So how about we break the cycle? Let’s start the new year as we truly mean to carry on and think about ourselves. Let’s forget outside pressures and concentrate on ourselves and what we want. Let’s take steps of empowerment to become our best selves and live our best lives in 2020. 

• Becoming your best you doesn’t mean changing everything you don’t like. It can mean framing things in a different way. For example, rather than thinking “there’s no point trying to tone my stomach because I’ve tried and it’s too hard so I’ll give up exercise” instead think “the level of exercise I do will burn fat and by the end of the year I could have lost a few inches of my middle”.
• Taking responsibility for you is another big step in empowerment. Think about how you make decisions. Do you make rash decisions that only make you feel regretful? Could you adapt your decision-making processes, to make more considered choices that make you feel virtuous?
• Think about what gives you joy and what doesn’t. How can you do more of the good stuff and less of the not so good. And by good we mean things that genuinely make you feel good. Not the short-term high of a bottle of wine or cake that makes you feel guilty the next day. Things that have a long-lasting happiness like seeing more of the person that makes you feel the most comfortable are great for turning you into your best self.
• Unfollow anyone, real life or celebrity, that makes you feel bad on social media. A lot of the things we see on social media are false representations of life, tricking us into believing that everyone has a better time of it than us. Instead, try following some body positivity accounts or accounts that celebrate individuality and self-confidence.
• Be present as much as you can. Stop rushing from one week to the next without noticing who or what is surrounding you. Take time to notice the life going on around you.
• Use our Empowerment Guide to help set out your plans for making healthy, feel good choices.
• Practice forgiveness. People and events out of our control can test our patience. But if we let go of the things we can, it creates less of a mental load.
• Be honest with yourself and with others. Creating mistruths also creates a mental load that you have to remember. Being your best version is all about simplifying your life where you can, and being honest with how you feel, allowing yourself to feel how you need to feel, saying no to things that stress or worry you and setting honest goals frees up mental space to spend on celebrating how amazing you are. Happy 2020!