Why New Year's Resolutions Are Too Late: Reflect & Move Forward To Achieve Your 2020 Goals At Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice is that time of year where we've reached the end of a huge cycle.

Massive series of events,

Quite likely,

And as the year comes to a close,

Rather than it being a time to reflect,

It can be a period of,

Well,

Total utter mayhem.

How was this year for you?

Have you found time to pause and acknowledge all that has happened to you?

Everything you've achieved,

The highs,

The lows?

Have you considered how you might like to spend 2020?

How might you like next year to look for you?

We're not only entering a new year,

We're about to enter a new decade.

I don't know about you,

But as far as New Year's resolutions are concerned,

I rarely get round to thinking about them,

Let alone sticking to them.

When I decide to make a resolution,

It's rushed,

Probably chosen quickly,

Literally as the clock is counting down to midnight.

Often,

I don't even decide on any resolutions until it's the 2nd or 3rd or 4th of January.

Now at Winter Solstice,

We're at the cusp of the day,

It's beginning to get longer again.

It's also just ahead of the crazy business of Christmas and festive celebrations.

If Winter Solstice ever was a time to pause and reflect,

I don't know how you're going to fit it in.

Join me now,

Harness the power not only of Winter Solstice and entering a new decade,

But more simply,

The power of timing.

Do it before you get too busy,

Do it before New Year comes into play.

Let's plan from now.

Before we move forward into 2020,

First what we must do is reflect on 2019.

We begin by reflecting on the past.

How was 2019 for you?

It can be really easy to forget,

So let's go month by month and honour every event,

Every happening,

Every achievement,

Every loss,

Every heartbreak,

Every disappointment you've experienced this year and it is from here that we can then clear the slate and begin something new,

Begin something good.

Sometimes life gets ahead of us and it could be 2021 before you've even had time to stop and look back at 2015.

We don't have a moment sometimes to even think,

Let alone reflect.

Now before we go into the actual exercises,

Just for a moment I've got to ask,

Who here actually sets a New Year's resolution,

One before the New Year has actually come in and two sticks to it beyond January,

Beyond February,

All the way through?

Any of you.

I feel the thing about New Year's resolutions is that we feel forced to make them in a very,

Very time pressured environment which tends to be alcohol induced New Year's Eve parties or the lead up to it where we're getting ready to make Christmas dinners,

Choosing presents.

We're just so busy at this time of year and it gives us no time to actually pause and reflect on where we actually want to go,

Let alone where we've come from.

So how can you set a New Year's resolution where you've not actually looked at what you intend to do in the future and where you're coming from,

From the past perspective?

Grab a pen and paper guys,

We're going to go.

Before we begin,

I've got to be totally honest with you.

I would love to say I am sat in my yoga studio sanctuary surrounded by pictures of Buddhas and beautiful tea lights.

The whole scene should be set up for winter solstice.

However,

I'm actually sat here in my jammies on the floor of my mum's living room recording this podcast with some sort of paraffin-esque dry skin boots on my feet.

And I've got one half of my face covered with my homemade spirulina and bentonite clay mask.

And the other half is covered in Sudha creme to see which one will clear up my spots faster because I've just been burning the candle at both ends and some.

And so for my not so glamorous recording studio,

Let's begin.

On your piece of paper,

I'd like you to write the number 2019.

No guesses as to what that is.

Underneath it,

I'd like you to put January.

So how was January 2019 for you?

And I hope it could be really,

Really difficult to remember.

We forget so many things that happened to us in the last week,

Let alone in a whole year.

If you need to grab your phone or your calendars,

Look up where you were.

Who were you with?

What country were you in?

Were you on holiday?

Were you working?

Had you just started a new job?

Write down exactly what scenario you were in in January.

Was it a good one?

Was it a bad one?

Was it average?

Maybe there were some highs and some lows.

But put everything down on paper that you remember,

Particularly how you felt.

Did you achieve anything that month?

Had you hoped to achieve something that month and perhaps been a bit disappointed?

Was there anything that held you back?

Get it all on paper.

Were you unwell?

Was anybody close to you unwell?

Perhaps you lost somebody.

Write this down.

Remember it,

Look at it and acknowledge it.

When you're ready,

We'll move on to the next month and you can pause if you wish to carry on with all of January.

Had you set any New Year's resolutions that month and did they continue into February?

So now we're moving on to February.

Write down February.

Who were you with then?

Where were you then?

Had you had a holiday yet?

How was work going for you?

Were you still working on certain goals that were becoming a struggle at the time?

Had you given them up?

Had you moved on to something or somebody new?

What were your aspirations that month?

How did you feel?

How was your health?

And were you looking forward to the rest of the year?

Continue with February and pause this.

When you're ready,

Unpause and we'll move on to March.

So March is the time of the spring equinox.

Tends to be a buzz in the air at this time of year.

What was the weather like?

Do you remember?

What were you doing?

What about your business plans?

How was your business going?

Maybe you were in love.

Maybe you were heartbroken.

Write down what you remember.

I'd like you to continue this exercise through April,

May,

June,

July,

All the way through to this month,

December.

How did you feel each month?

How was your health?

What were you hoping for at that time?

Were you busy?

Were you burned out?

In fact,

When you look at all 12 months after doing this exercise for each month,

How burned out were you each time this year?

Was most of the year a tired year?

Was most of the year a disappointing year?

Can you pinpoint any patterns to that?

Did most of your achievements relate to hanging around certain groups of people who lifted you?

Was there something to do with work that may have done the opposite to the way you felt most of the time?

Were there many disappointments?

And perhaps can you see a reason as to why?

How did your relationships and your business progress throughout the year?

Did it progress as fast or in the way that you'd hoped?

Had you planned for it to progress in any particular way?

Or were you winging it as you went along?

Had you previously written down any goals for 2019 back in 2018?

And how had you worked to stick to them?

How are you feeling physically at each point in the year?

What about your family,

Children,

Friends,

Partners,

Colleagues?

How much time are you spending them at each of these months throughout the year?

And at each of these times,

How did it make you feel?

Good?

Bad?

Disappointed?

Under pressure?

Or fed on a soul level?

At certain points of this exercise,

I highly recommend that you stop and take a few deep breaths in and out.

When you've finished with all 12 months,

Just take a few moments,

Look down on a piece of paper,

And ask yourself,

If you could describe 2019 in just two words,

What would they be?

Are they what you hoped they'd be at the start of 2019?

Or are they so far from it?

And that may be a good thing.

Do you even remember how you celebrated the new year last year?

I wonder.

Now,

This exercise is much more important than just a listening exercise.

You must do it with pen and paper.

If you need to return to this podcast a little bit later to do the work.

I can't stress how powerful it is to actually write this down,

Rather than just think about it.

Now,

When you look over at the month,

Some of them may have been good,

Some of them may have been bad,

You win some and you lose some.

This is not about looking at your year and wallowing in the fact that it wasn't as successful or as happy or as in love as you hoped it to be.

It's not about not having as much money as you hoped to have that year.

This is about looking on the past,

Accepting it,

Seeing it for what it is,

Perhaps using some of it to shape next year.

But ultimately,

We want to let that go and truly move into the next year,

The next decade,

The next phase of your life.

I'm not saying here that you should ignore the fact that you went through any kind of trauma,

Whatever kind of trauma it might have been.

But there is a time to acknowledge it,

Accept it,

Take what you can as far as learning and growth are concerned.

But if something dramatic that happened to you in the past is still affecting your present life and your future,

It's time to find a way to move forward,

Which is with letting that go as much as you can.

Now just before we put the past back in the past where it belongs,

I'd like you to write down a list of the things you did,

The people you were around,

The books you read,

That helped you get through whatever it was that you got through.

Also write down anything that helped you achieve,

That helped you grow,

That helped you learn,

That improved your sense of happiness and well being.

It might have been a new job,

Might have been a new friend,

A new partner.

What made you feel good?

What made the things that made you feel bad make you feel better?

It could even be food.

We're going to get onto food a little bit later,

But if it was food,

Put that food down on paper too.

Now next page,

2020.

What do you want more of?

Who do you want more of?

What kind of life do you want to live in 2020?

Now you don't yet have to break it down into a monthly chart per se,

But I would like you to put a timeline down.

Where would you like to be at the start of 2020?

Who do you want to be celebrating with?

Perhaps it's on your own.

That's often one of the best ways to start a new year if I'm being totally honest.

Where do you want to be halfway through the year?

Where would you like to see yourself towards the end of 2020?

You can be as specific as you like.

You can be as realistic as you want or actually put down what your dream is.

You might surprise yourself.

You might be amazed at what you can achieve when you become clear about what it is that you actually want.

I'd like you to note down the things you want more of in 2020 and also the things you want less of,

Whether it's food,

A certain type of work,

To be in a certain type of place,

To be in a certain type of home,

Wearing certain kinds of clothes.

Perhaps you want your body to look or feel a different way.

Get it all down on paper,

What you want more of and what you want less of.

Now anything you've written that you want less of in your life,

I'd like you to put one line through all of it.

Then next to those,

What I want less ofs,

I want you to write the opposite.

So for example,

If you say,

I want less grief in my life,

Instead put a line through that and next to it write,

I want more happiness in my life.

You want to work less,

But I want to play more or I want to relax more or I want to invest more time in self-care.

You hope to eat less junk food,

Strike a line through that and write instead,

I want to eat more foods that will heal me and serve my body and make me feel good.

So we're now coming to a place where actually we're not working with negatives anymore and the things you want to have in our life less,

We're actually focusing only on the things that we do want in our life.

Now,

If I went to an artist and I asked him to paint something for me and I said,

I don't want you to paint a house,

I don't want you to paint a landscape,

I don't want you to paint a portrait,

Definitely don't paint me a bowl of fruit,

Then what am I going to expect him to give me at the end of the commission?

Whatever he gives me,

I can't really complain because all I told him to paint was the things that I didn't want him to actually paint.

I haven't given him any clear idea of what I actually want.

So how can I complain to him when he brings me something that I didn't want either?

You've got to make it easy.

Talk about the picture that you do want to paint for your life.

Talk about the things you want in your life you want to do,

You want to create,

You want to learn,

You want to eat,

You want to speak,

And you want to receive.

It's that simple.

Let go of the stuff you don't want.

When I'm working with my nutrition clients and we're talking about food,

It's very,

Very easy to give them a list of the don'ts.

Don't eat chocolate,

Don't eat crisps,

Don't eat junk food,

Don't drink coffee,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't.

And they spend the next two weeks or the rest of their life thinking about the things that they're not allowed to eat.

And inevitably,

They're going to cave in at some point because they're only ever thinking about the elephant in the room that we've told everybody not to speak about.

Instead,

I work from this perspective.

Here's a list of things you can enjoy.

What I'm talking about is food crowding.

So we're not cutting anything out.

We're just talking about how we crowd in the good stuff.

You know,

We know that broccoli is good for us.

We know that fruit and vegetables are good for us.

And we know generally that junk food and chocolate is not so good for us.

I don't want to say it's bad because a little bit of a bad thing can sometimes be good.

But if you eat more of the bad stuff,

Less of the good stuff,

You know what's going to happen.

But if on a mental level,

All you're thinking about is what you cannot have in your life,

Then you're probably just going to manifest that or you're going to drive yourself crazy thinking about it all the time.

Instead,

Focus on the good.

If you've got a list of the things you can have that are going to serve you,

Broccoli,

Beautiful,

Fresh organic fruits with a delicious sweetness and find ways of making something delicious from natural fruits and vegetables.

Eventually,

You're going to find meals that you actually enjoy,

Rather than thinking,

Well,

I can't have the food I actually enjoy,

Which is a chocolate bar.

And all I've got is this dry lettuce leaf,

Because you're still thinking about thing you can't have in your life.

And it can be the same with people actually.

Have you ever heard of the circle of seven.

So people say that we are the average of the seven people we spend the most time with.

And these people don't necessarily have to be your best friends.

They're the people we spend most of our time with.

And it doesn't tend to be our family really,

It's the people we're working with eight hours a day or more.

It's the people that we travel to work with.

And then comes our family,

Maybe the in-laws.

Now don't get me wrong,

I'm not saying that in-laws are bad at all.

But when it comes to how you choose to spend your time,

How often do you choose to spend the time with the people you really want,

As opposed to spending time and energy on the people you think you have to spend it on and spend it with?

What I used to do was in a little notebook on my diary at the end of every month,

I would write my list,

My circle of seven.

Now these are the people that I was spending most of my time with,

Whether it was in the office,

On the phone,

On WhatsApp,

Out and about.

And as soon as I started writing down who my circle of seven were,

It changed very,

Very quickly.

Because if I'm the average of the seven people I spend the most time with,

And they're all shouty,

Aggressive people in the environment I was working back in the day when I was a commodities broker,

That was going to make me a very shouty,

Aggressive person.

And actually,

If I'm quite honest,

I'm still working off that average.

A lot of that stressed,

Erratic energy is still in me.

Maybe it's always been a part of me.

But after 10 years of spending time in that environment,

Of course,

That's going to still be forming part of my average.

The people I spend time with now are completely different.

And I'm not saying that the people from my past were toxic at all.

Very often,

You think that you're surrounded with all these toxic people.

But often if the problem is everyone else,

It tends to be you.

And I've got my finger right on me as I'm saying this.

But look at your circle of seven and think,

Right,

If I'm one person,

Who do I want to be most like,

I don't latch yourselves onto that person.

But spend more time around the people that feed you that help you grow,

And that challenge you in a really,

Really positive way.

And again,

Going back to cutting out versus crowding in,

We're not saying,

Right,

I'm going to cut out all of these people because they don't serve me or I think that they're toxic people.

That's never the case.

Focus on crowding in the good stuff,

The good food,

The good people.

And in the end,

Naturally,

There's just not as much time or energy that you're able to spend on the foods or the people or the activities that aren't best serving you anyway.

Now,

Please write down a list of the great things that you would like to crowd into your life for 2020.

Now,

If it's that you want to work out more or you want to meet the right guy or girl,

You have to be specific.

It's not just I'm going to go to the gym.

Say when you're going to go to the gym,

How many times you're going to go to the gym,

What kind of class are you going to do?

If you're looking for a special partner,

What qualities do you want them to have?

How do you want them to make you feel?

Be really clear,

Be incredibly specific.

Remember,

It's no good to ask an artist to do a job for you.

But you don't really tell him what you want,

What colours you want him to paint.

How do you want this partner to make you feel?

Where do you want to hang out with them?

Where do you think you might meet them?

For 2020,

Spend more time in those sorts of places.

Going back to crowding in,

If your mates love going out boozing every night,

But you want to be too total,

Don't dump your friends.

Instead,

Spend a bit of time in an environment where you may meet people that have similar interests to you and spend a little bit more time with them,

As well as your old friends.

Food.

Don't just cut out the cheesecake,

Have the cheesecake,

But crowd in the good foods beforehand.

I'm going to have a ton of vegetables on my plate with my steak before I have that chocolate New York cheesecake.

You can have your cake and eat it.

You don't have to come from a place where you think you have to cut out food.

Otherwise,

You're going to feel guilty and you'll never get those washboard abs.

Find ways where you can feed your body on a cellular level.

Know that you're giving your body the good stuff so that on the occasions where you're giving your body something,

Let's say delicious,

But maybe not so kind to your liver,

The body can handle it.

You get the good with the bad.

The most important thing that I can offer you here is that you plan 2020 and do it now.

Don't wait until just before Christmas or New Year's because you know that you're going to run out of time.

Perhaps you're under pressure time-wise already now.

Remember that you can use this technique at any time of year.

You don't have to wait for the New Year's resolutions to chime in.

If you've enjoyed this podcast,

You can find more on www.

Victoriatadams.

Co.

Uk.

Tons of free recipes are on there,

As well as information of my retreats that are coming up.

And you can contact me if you'd like one-to-one nutrition coaching or facial exercise classes,

All online.

You can do it from anywhere in the world.

If anything I've touched on in tonight's podcast has resonated with you,

If you have experienced a very difficult 2019 or before that,

If you've tried countless ways of getting on with life despite grief,

Whether you've lost someone out of bereavement or heartbreak,

Been through abuse and that could be emotional or physical,

Financial loss or anything that broke your heart and changed your world,

Whether it was 30 seconds ago,

30 days ago or 30 years ago.

Join me in January for the Heart Recovery Retreat,

The Grief and Bereavement.

It's in the Cotswolds.

You can find all the information online and I'll be joined by Dipti Solanki,

Grief Coach and Homeopath.

This is not your usual type of workshop as far as dealing with grief and depression is concerned.

You're going to have homework.

It's a really unique and fresh approach at dealing with grief where you actually have to do the work in order to process it and then go through it and finally move on.

6th to the 10th of January.

Just drop me a line if you'd like to hear more.

The website is victoriaadams.

Co.

Uk or you can email me on victoria.

Adamsatme.

Com.

You will have yoga with me twice a day and the menu will be geared to look after your waistline after a couple too many mince pies and maybe bucks biz at Christmas time.

Ladies and gentlemen,

That is all for now.

I hope you found this helpful and know how it can be.

Life runs really quickly and you set yourself a goal ten years later you realise you're not even halfway there.

Look after yourself.

Don't be so hard on yourself and remember you can be super super super healthy but if it makes you super unhappy what's the point?

Right then I better get these boots off and my face mask off before my face freezes this way.

I wish you the best Christmas time and a very very happy new year.