Happy New Year everyone! 🧨🎍✨ Guess I’ll hop on the train and throw a few thoughts I have around the topic of goals and resolutions. But before I do, let it be stated that New Year’s is one of the oldest and most universal of all pagan traditions. The custom of celebrating it has remained essentially unchanged for 4,000 years! 📿🗝️🦩 “There is scarcely a people, ancient or modern, savage or civilized,” writes Theodor H. Gaster, in his definitive book “New Year”, “which has not observed it….in one form or another. Yet no other festival has been celebrated on so many different dates or in so many seemingly different ways.” So it seems that folks from all walks of life, all over the world, for at least 4,000 years appreciate some sort of new start and clean slate. ❤️🗺️🗓️ Why do we want a clean slate? Generally, so we can create something new.
Of course, we can create something new any old time. We don’t necessarily need a new year to do this. 🏎️🏠🎉 But the new year is kinda forcing change upon us. Think about it. We have to get a new calendar. We have to start writing 2022. We have to start thinking about taxes. So since we’re already forced to make these slight changes, we might as well jump in, whole hog, and change things up…..if we feel inspired to. I mean, the energy is there for us to do so; everyone else is doin’ it, right?!🐷📑✨ What if your life is already awesome sauce and there’s nothing you really want to change? Maybe just consider trying something new? ❓🌑 When my mom turned 60 she decided she would try something new every year. One year she decided to try drinking coffee. Not for the health benefits but simply because the people she knew that drank coffee just absolutely loved it. ☕🥗👻 The next year she joined a crossfit gym.
Did any of those new life additions stick for her? Definitely. Mom became a downright coffee snob and has since, regretfully, given it up as the caffeine stopped serving her.
She installed a full blown gym in her basement and is now perfecting her pull up technique. 🏋️🥰🔥
These are new things she tried, on a whim, as a way to change it up a bit. Just to see if there might be something new and spicy available to add to her life experience.
My 84 year old client, Patty, shared that her goal for the new year was to develop a regular tai chi practice. 🧘🥅
I asked her what past goal she had that she was most successful with. Patty shared that when she was 14 she just knew she wanted to become a social worker. She came from a poor Italian family that couldn’t afford to pay for her college.
Patty worked hard in school, picked up part time jobs, “worked for a really mean nun for 4 years that no one else was willing to work for” as part of a work study program while attending the College of St. Catherine. She even took a year off school to work to save money for college. ⛪👔🧑🏫
Nine years later, after the initial goal she set when she was 14, she realized her dream of graduating from college and starting, which turned out to be, a lifelong career as a social worker.
Other goals that Patty set and achieved included quitting smoking after picking up the habit in college and losing weight after having kids.🚭 ✨🚸
Patty thinks the key to sticking with new habits after setting goals is to remember a goal you were successful with in the past and remind yourself, “hey, remember when you wanted to quit smoking? You did that. You can also lose this weight.”
Who am I to argue with an 84-year-old woman who is still living on her own, entertaining in her home, driving herself to her appointments, and appears to have procured a happy successful life for herself? 👵🎈🤗
And I have no doubts that Patty will be able to stick to her tai chi routine this year.😉
If achieving a greater sense of health and well being are on your list of goals for 2022, here at Optimal Wellness Solutions, WE GOT YOU! 🥗🧘
If you’d like to get on the schedule for one of our awesome services, click here!
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