Tips from the EHW team to kick start your new year, the right way!

We can hardly believe it’s been a year since our first blog post, and we’re already in 2023. We hope everyone in our community had a fantastic end to 2022, and managed to take a break from working, and some time to rest and relax!

For our first blog post for 2023, we wanted to share a few tips from us to help motivate you for the year ahead.

What’s on your plate?

I’m not talking about food here, although I do always find the start of a New Year a good time to reset (see our last year’s post on intentions!) – whether that’s Dry January, Veganuary, aiming to drink more water. Here’s some Instagram inspo for you – Emthenutritionist and The Food Medic.

The main focus to this question was encouraging you to think about what’s on your plate generally – what priorities and elements of your life are you juggling? What’s your list of work commitments or projects? There are some work habits we can use across other areas here;

• Often in a work setting, we plan quarter by quarter – this can be helpful generally. What are big focuses each quarter that you’ll need to plan for? It could be a big trip coming up, or one of our EHW team has a wedding to plan this year, or big work projects that will take up a lot of time

• Is there anything you can de-prioritise? I took some time during the last few days to list out many areas and take a difficult decision to step away from some work projects. This isn’t easy for me to do, as I like to stay busy, but recognising when you have too much is also important – I decided to step away from some projects at work that I had been part of for over a year, that are voluntary work projects that sit alongside my core role, and I discussed with others to make sure it was the right decision.

• Mindset over matter – how are you feeling going into the year ahead? Your mindset has a huge impact on your day, week, month, motivation levels and ultimately how you go after what’s in front of you. A colleague of mine recommended Tessa Romero on Instagram who focuses on Positive Motherhood and Mindset – but many of the elements are transferable.

Let us know any top tips you have on any of these areas – or any books or Instagram accounts that have helped you kick start the new year?

Wishing you a fabulous start to 2023 – we’re excited for more content and events for you this coming year!

All the best Hayley

Progress, not Perfection

There’s too many quotes to list here on this topic, but often we strive for perfection and end up ignoring progress – the reality is we should be celebrating those small steps along the way. Looking for perfection is not only exhausting but often unattainable because what is deemed as being perfect is often near impossible to achieve.

But how do we measure and celebrate our progress – let’s share some tips;

- Get comfortable with celebrating your own progress – we’re very good at beating ourselves up so where celebrating ourselves feels uncomfortable, let’s get comfortable. Whether you tell yourself about these “wins”, journal them, or tell a trusted circle; starting to talk about them is a great first step.

- Consider what progress means for you – we are all different, on unique journeys. Society teaches us to compare but that is an unhealthy behavior we all need to try to unlearn. Take a step back, remind yourself what you are striving towards and why, and think about what steps you are aiming for. Reflect and narrow down the top 3-5 values to measure success in these areas (examples: community, security, creativity, adventure) – you don’t have to be and shouldn’t be successful at everything – so focus on what’s important to you.

-  Progress isn’t always linear – Setbacks pop up in all areas. Some are within your control, some are outside, but they happen. Whatever your end goal is, the path to get there is likely to be winding – we’ve all seen a visual of a jagged graph, with ups, downs, but provided the overall trend is in the right direction, you’re making progress! When we fail, we grow – so don’t let these setbacks get in the way or let you give up completely.    

Make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list to hear more on our upcoming program, which will be covering Goal Setting as one of our topics (spoiler alert!). Wishing you luck with your ongoing goals, challenges – why not share your progress with us on our LinkedIn or Facebook communities – we’d love to hear about it and help celebrate!

All the best Hayley

“New Years Resolution” is a popular term, yet research suggests many of these either fail or are not achievable. Setting intentions can be another way of stating what you will do, or intend to do over the course of the year ahead, but taking pressure off and giving you the accountability to adapt your behaviors and actions to enforce that change. We’ve been seeing lots of great content online discussing intentions vs resolutions!

It’s important to reflect back on the year that has passed, a retrospective of sorts, and this can be brief, but can help to feed into important focus areas for the year ahead. I’l recommend you to grab a paper and a pen.

Here’s a couple of prompts for reflecting back;

- What are some of the things you achieved in 2021 – one item is great, aim for maximum 3-5

- What was the biggest challenge of 2021 you faced?

- Reflect on your 2021 resolutions or intentions – what were they / what was the progress – let’s bear in mind the shift we’ve seen in the world in the last 12 months, and let that reassure us that goals and intentions should also evolve and adapt as we go.

Now thinking ahead to 2022;

- What categories in your life are the focus areas? These might link to your personal values or what’s important to you. I like to map out different areas such as Career, Hobbies, Wellness, Family – but think about your personal list and aim for maximum 3-5.

- What are the main things against these focus areas that you would like to achieve?

- Set your intentions! They can be as big or small as you like, as specific or broad as needed – but they need to feel right for you.

Having intentions that are linked closely to your values and focus areas, that will not add undue pressure and will definitely not be seen as punishment, means you’ll automatically feel more positive when you revisit them over the year. After the whirlwind years of 2020 and 2021, we all deserve a more encouraging and empathic approach.

Top tips for following up on your 2022 intentions;

- Write them down somewhere! Make a note somewhere visible where you can refer back – in your diary or journal, in a note on your phone.

- Tell other people – share with your friends or family what you intend to do this year – sharing is caring.

- Set aside some time for activities relating to your intentions – maybe your intention is to spend more time outdoors? Find some new walking routes near you. If your intention is to be more creative, why not sign up for a class to try something new.

- Focus on breaking action items down into smaller, more achievable things you can do.

- Celebrate when you see progress, however small. We strive for progress, not perfection.

Let’s consider an example;

A resolution might be “I am going to workout at least 3 times per week in 2022” – this is a bold statement, and could be trying to enforce a huge change, which you’ll feel bad if you then cannot adhere to. Changing to an intention might change this to “I intend to dedicate time to my wellbeing in 2022” – already this is feeling more supportive and achievable, but then each week you might consider how you’re going to do that. This could be a nice walk outside, finding a new yoga class with friends, heading for a run; all moments you can then celebrate. This is giving you flexibility whilst maintaining accountability for what you want to achieve.

Good luck with your New Year’s intentions/Hayley