NEW YEAR, NEW ME?

Making Wellness a Reality

By Abigail Baker

Year after year, summer after summer, you repeat the same resolution in your head that this time will be different. This time, you’ll be healthier, fitter, happier, better – the list goes on.

You find a bunch of resources about the latest wellness trends and latch on, only to be disappointed in your attempts by February.

The major problem with this modus operandi is that these tools and tips don’t always suit your lifestyle, routine, or sensibilities. The advice you’ve stumbled upon isn’t personalised or tailored to your unique needs, but rather highly generalised to fit a wide range of people who all live very different lives to the one you do.

The truth is, if you want to make any lasting lifestyle changes, it’s vitally important that you personalise your wellness. Here are a few simple ways you can make this a reality in 2022:

1. SPEND TIME IN SELF-REFLECTION

Start by reflecting on your habits and personality type by asking yourself the following questions: • Do you feel more wellness-focused in the morning or evening? • What is your favourite part of your wellness journey? • What fulfils you? • Do you want to practise wellness alone or in a group? • Do you need support? • What has hindered your past attempts at making progress on the path to wellness? • Do you respond well to reminders and prompts? • What obstacles, both internal and external, can you foresee in the future? After this time of self-reflection, you should have a better understanding of what motivates and deters you, and what you would possibly have to enlist to make this work. Write your answers down and factor them into the next step.

2. PLAN TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

Sometimes, speaking a goal into existence simply just isn’t enough. To take it a step further, you need to create a well-thought-out plan on how you are going to achieve your goals. Start by identifying your main goal, and whittle it down into small, measurable, and achievable steps. This will help you not to feel overwhelmed, and give you something to measure your growth by.

3. DON’T BE OVERLY AMBITIOUS WITH YOUR TIME Amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life, it can be difficult to set aside time to work on your wellness. Even when you finally find the time in your busy schedule, it can be tricky to engage fully, as you are likely already drained after a long day. That’s why it’s important to be gentle with yourself and factor in the time you will need to really slow down and take stock.

Yes, you might have an hour in-between meetings or social responsibilities, but you might need most of that time to rest and reset. So, instead of feeling pressured to be overproductive, why not start by practising wellness for just 10 minutes a day, and seeing how that goes?

4. SCHEDULE ADJUSTMENTS As you work through your plan and the months start to go by, you will find that your circumstances start to change, or that things that worked at the start don’t anymore.

Be proactive by setting a date with yourself every couple of weeks to identify what can be improved. This doesn’t mean that you should drastically be changing your plan every week, but simply that after a month of 10 minutes of meditation a day, you can decide to increase that time and incorporate more of what worked for you during this period.

5. TAKE IT STEP BY STEP When people feel the sudden urge to change their lifestyles, many make too many changes all at once. Although this might feel great (and as if you finally have your life together!), it’s often unsustainable. Therefore, try to implement changes incrementally along your journey, rather than all at once.

I hope that these tips will allow you not only to create a personalised plan that will propel you forward on your journey to wellness, but also give you an idea of the necessary self-awareness that will enable any big changes in your life to be successful.