It’s the start of a new year and already I can feel people panicking about what goals they need to put in place. Why put yourself under more pressure? Christmas has just left the building, and January can feel like it has 68 days in it. 

Poor January, it almost starts to feel like a recovery period after giving our wallets and waistlines a battering due to overspending and overeating. Not only do we vow never to do any of this again, we make promises to ourselves that usually disintegrate by mid-February.

If you would like to make changes to your lifestyle, keep them simple, mindful and doable. Don’t do it from a place of fear or guilt, or because its January.

Ask yourself, does this nourish my mind, body or soul?

An intense challenge may work for some, but if you’re the kind of person who has never exercised a day in your life and then sign up for an Olympic training programme, you may fall at the first hurdle!

As soon as you deny yourself something, you will find all sorts of excuses to go back to it, or just get so frustrated and angry that you rebel.  You have given your power to this ‘thing’ which then has power over you. You then start to hold yourself hostage.

It is all about choice and little steps.

When I decided to give up smoking around 11 years ago, I had tried all sorts of methods. But then I stopped denying myself. I put a packet of cigarettes in the drawer and said to myself ‘ I am giving up smoking, if I want one, I will have one. But today I choose not to.’

Every day I knew they were in the back of my mind, there was nothing stopping me from having one, but every day I chose not to.

This gave me my power back from those pesky things and it worked. I think they were in the drawer for about 3 years, and became a bit of a celebratory souvenir!

During the process, there were no feelings of confiscating, denying or failing. It was a choice.

And a little step.