Are you excited for 2023 to start?

I’m excited to make 2023 my best year ever!

Are you?

If not, you should be!

It’s a brand new year that can bring you lots of new opportunities and experiences.

I strongly believe that my best years are still ahead of me and I'm going to do everything to make that happen.

That doesn't mean I always succeed, but I'm going to have a lot of fun trying.

This year I've enjoyed the pleasure of traveling again. I spent time in Mexico, Spain, France, The Netherlands, Scotland, England, Canada, Thailand and Indonesia where I currently am (Bali). I've already got a trip to Darwin, Australia planned.

I've also spent time in my new home town of Luz in Portugal.

Despite heading towards 60 I’m only just getting started

If you’re not as excited as I am or if you want to make sure that you’re heading into your best year ever, I encourage you to answer the following questions.

They will make you think and will set you up for success so you can get the most out of the next year.

If you like to explore more, I encourage you to download my reinvention & bucket list guides.

Question 1: Do you have a past or future focus?

If you read the paragraphs above and kept thinking that the best decade is already behind you, you may have a past focus.

I know that we all like to reminisce about the past and we may be thinking back of our twenties or thirties fondly. To that time that we were students or perhaps young parents.

But doing this too much and having a past focus keeps us in the past. And the reality is, the past will never come back.

We only have today and our future

When we look at the past too much, we may think of all the things we haven’t accomplished. Of our dreams that haven’t come true. We may have some regrets.

This podcast episode is actually on this topic (of regret) and I explain that there is one useful thing about having regret: it gives you a very clear indication of what you DO want.

So if you feel that you may be a bit past-focused, see what it is you’re focusing on. What regrets do you have? Turn those around and take action now.

Question 2: Do you have persistent beliefs that are holding you back?

Many of you have lived at least 40 years or more time on this planet. During that time we learn all kinds of things about the world.

Many of those things we learn are very useful.

But we also still believe things about ourselves and the world that are no longer useful.

We often believe that how we see the world is factual. That it’s just the reality. But a lot of what we consider as reality was taught to us in our youth.

For example, since I was picked on as a very young child, for a long time I had the belief that people are not kind.

If I cling to that belief I will find it very hard to find people that are kind in my life or to make new friends.

It’s always easy to find evidence for what we believe. There are plenty people in this world that do unkind things.

But if I’m blind to the opposite point of view I also can’t see that there are many more people that are extremely kind.

You may want to question some of the beliefs you have that may hold you back. And question them. I recorded a podcast on this topic as well: Finding evidence for your thoughts. You can find that podcast on this page.

Question beliefs like:

"It’s impossible to lose weight when I’ve been more than 150 pounds for so Long".

Is that really true?

Are there no examples of women who have done this?

Why do you think that is a fact?

Some more examples:

"You cannot start a business after 50".

"You should retire after 60".

"It’s impossible to find a new relationship when you’re at a certain age and have 3 kids".

"I’m not good at anything. I’m averagely good at a lot of things but not one thing that I excel in".

The latter is one thing I believed about myself in the past. It didn’t serve me one bit.

When I stopped believing this and started focusing on one thing, I could excel at that one thing.

I now believe that I can be good at anything I have a passion for and that I set my mind to. That belief has served me well and has enabled me to start a really successful business and live a life I love.

These are just a few examples of beliefs that you may have that keep you stuck in the same place.

You may like to examine some of your dreams and then see if there are any consistent beliefs that have been holding you back from achieving them.

Question 3: How kind are you towards yourself?

If you answered the question above and discovered some beliefs that may have been holding you back, you may now start to berate yourself.

You may find yourself foolish for believing it.

Or maybe there are other things you don’t like about yourself.

Maybe you know that you procrastinate all the time and don’t honor your own commitments.

Maybe you give into temptation too much and then feel bad about yourself.

It may feel like the right thing to do. After all, you didn't stick to your schedule and now you feel justified to punish yourself or talk to yourself in an unkind way.

The thing is that this will put you in a vicious circle. It will not get you the results you want.

When you ate too many cookies last night and then you beat yourself up the next day for doing that, it will not start to make you feel better.

When you feel bad about yourself, you’re unlikely to approach any new task or commitment with positivity and energy. You’re more likely to soothe yourself with Netflix which leads to procrastination on your goals, which will start you to feel bad about yourself again, etc.

You're now back in the vicious circle.

Instead,  you may like to learn to be kind to yourself. 

Why did you eat the cookies last night? What was the feeling that caused it? Did you just want to comfort yourself?

Why did you need to be soothed by something? Which thoughts were going through your head?

Perhaps you  weren’t able to deal with some bad things your boss said that day? You didn’t want to fo deal with the feelings from that?

You may feel that being kind to yourself is treating yourself to cookies (and eating 1 or 2 can be perfectly fine). But maybe deep down you know that eating 10 of them is not being kind to yourself at all. It will only make you feel worse in the long run.

So what if you just felt your feelings of disappointment? Understood them and then be kind to yourself. You may see that OF COURSE you feel this way. Your thoughts about what your boss said caused you to feel a certain way.

You may write it down. Process it. Understand it. And feel compassion for yourself without feeling the need to buffer with food, just to make the feelings go away.  Want to read more, check out my article on how to feel better.

Have compassion for the things that you did in the past.

Have compassion for your mistakes and those of others.

Let go of any mistakes you made.

Once you learn how to do this, you can break the cycle of beating yourself up and going in vicious circles. 

Instead you will learn to have a future focus and find ways to do things differently next time.

Question 4: Do you know what you want, to make 2023 your best year ever?

To make 2023 the best year ever, you need to know what you want.

Do you?

From my recent survey I found that a lot of women don't know exactly what they want.

And that is because it's not easy.

There are so many choices.

You may even feel that there is no time in your life to want more.

I believe it's always good to have a goal of some kind.

Not because our current life isn't good enough, but simply because it's fun to grow as a person.

It's fun to have something to move towards.

Question 5: are you grateful for the all the things that you DO have in your life?

Sometimes life gets so busy that we forget all the things that we can be grateful for.

It's when we feel abundant that we become more capable to create the best year ever.

Feeling grateful for all that you have doesn't mean you don't want more.

It doesn't mean that you don't want to grow.

In fact, when you feel grateful for all that you have already, you can create more abundance.

You can truly create your best year ever.

Let's create your best year ever!

I would love to help you get your most amazing year, or even decade ever.

I've created a reinvention guide as well as a bucket list that can help you get lots of inspiration for the new year.

Click here to get these guides.

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”  - Carl Jung

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