If you’ve already lost the piece of paper you wrote your intentions on for the New Year or your resolutions have fallen by the wayside, please don’t panic, we’ve got you!
A simple but effective way to get clear with your goals is to create a personal Affirmation to repeat either outload or to yourself each day. Affirmations are positive statements that can help to shift negative thought patterns or limiting beliefs and improve your self-esteem, self-worth and make you feel more motivated.
So take a few moments to get quiet and think about what words you want to welcome into your life this year. How do you want to show up for yourself and what do you want to manifest more of?
- Compassion
- Abundance
- Strength
- Discipline
- Acceptance
- Love
- Kindness
- Creativity
- Something else perhaps?
Once you have this clear in your mind, you can create your Affirmation, think of it as a self-affirming statement beginning with “I am”. For example: “I am enough & more”, “I am courageous and I stand up for myself,”, “I am deserving of love and compassion”, “I am grateful & worthy of chasing my dreams”, “I am kind and I attract abundance.”
The word affirmation comes from the Latin affirmare, meaning “to make steady, strengthen” and by regularly speaking your affirmation out loud you can help to build new neural pathways in your brain, literally rewiring your mind to stay focused on your goals, create clarity and more belief in yourself!
“Affirmations do indeed strengthen us by helping us believe in the potential of an action we desire to manifest. When we verbally affirm our dreams and ambitions, we are instantly empowered with a deep sense of reassurance that our wishful words will become reality.” Dr. Carmen Harra
Thinking about your goals and intentions for the year ahead is a great reflective exercise, it helps you to create space to think about what you want to manifest, create and bring into your life. But what about going one step further this year and putting them into a tangible plan? That is where the magic really happens and we can make lasting, meaningful changes.
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” ― Greg Reid
We’ve created this simple one page planner for you to use to help map out what your focus is for 2023 and get clear on your goals – happy planning!
About Liz Joy Hardie
Liz is Head of Wellness at MoreYoga, a trained Holistic Wellbeing Coach and Senior Yoga Teacher specialising in Yoga Therapy for Stress & Anxiety. Liz came to teach Yoga after being signed off from work with a blood pressure condition brought on by stress & generalised anxiety disorder. She is an advocate for Mental Health Awareness and co-founded the MoreMind Programme to promote positive mental health and help fight the stigma that still exists around mental illness. Her writing and commentary has been featured in Stylist, Time Out, The Times, Women’s Health, The Telegraph, Huffpost and more.