Have you ever felt like our New Year’s resolutions are so difficult to follow through?
We’ve all been there, we’ve made goals for the new year, and most of them are forgotten midway through. Some of them may be health-based – to lose weight, to exercise more, some may be to cut back on drinking, some may be to do with better self-care. All these things are wonderful, and if you’ve successfully achieved them, then that’s amazing and I hope you continue to do so, but what I’d like to invite you to consider here is to reflect deeply while setting your intentions in the year ahead.
Why do we want to lose weight? What are we ultimately trying to achieve? To be more attractive? To be healthier? To feel better about ourselves? What does losing weight mean in your mind?
Why do we want to cut back on drinking? Do we behave poorly after a few drinks? Does it impact your relationship with your loved ones? Are we performing worse at work because of it? Perhaps what you’re trying to achieve ultimately is better mental clarity and self-control. But if we are drinking in massive amounts, why do we want to drink to begin with? What’s the root cause of wanting to drink to begin with? What are ultimately we trying to escape from? What are we trying to shut off? What emotions are we not trying to feel?
Instead of purely saying it would be helpful to exercise boundaries, I’d love to invite you on steps further. What I’d love to share here is a practical guide, a self-evaluation with ways to navigate through typical issues that many of us face all too commonly, to point out when we may not even realize we’re facing it and hopefully it helps create some real-lasting changes.
Here are 11 common patterns we can explore for further self-growth and better well-being. They are by no means the only ones, and these patterns and suggestions are very general and do not account for individual experiences. So keep in mind that we’re all different but this is a general overview that I hope can still be helpful. Check and see if any of these resonate with you, where you stand with them now, and how you’d like to move further with them.
#1: “People always come to me with their problems, but I have problems of my own and don’t have the capacity to take on more.”
How to Tell When You Have It:
People with problems gravitate toward you. You can’t seem to find the strength to say no. You always find yourself dealing with problems that are not even your own.
Potential Underlying Issue:
Your desire to make people have a great impression of you.
What You Can Work on:
Boundaries
Suggested Call To Action:
Pleasing people pave the way for our boundaries to be crossed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally alright to help people when they need it. However, it’s a different story when we feel we aren’t able to say “no” to favors just because we don’t want people to have a negative impression of us.
When somebody comes up to you to ask for help, view the problem with an objective eye. Ask questions like “Is this something I need to be involved with? If so, how involved should I be?” and “How can I extend help without getting caught up with the problem?” Having these guide questions can prevent you from falling into the cycle of getting overly involved in problems that are not even your own.
How to Evaluate Yourself:
Being able to empathize without risking your sanity is a form of empowerment. Evaluate yourself by checking how you react when people come up to you with their problems. Do you still get heavily involved? Do you now know how to take a step back from the drama to save your mental health?
#2: “I tend to procrastinate with work and I fail to follow through with commitments.”
How to Tell When You Have It:
You always miss deadlines no matter how much you want to be efficient. You find it difficult to start tasks.
Potential Underlying Issues:
You’re a perfectionist and you always aim for perfection.
You don’t like someone telling you what to do and when to do it.
You find deadlines too restrictive.
What You Can Work On:
Letting go of unrealistic perfection.
Shifting your perspective and making your deadlines goals fun and achievements to celebrate.
Suggested Call To Action:
Simply start. When there’s a task behind you, simply go for it.
Formulate a game plan with milestones and rewards that get you excited.
Explore why you don’t like deadlines and any emotions associated with them. Is it just the word that puts you off, or what about it turns you off? Could you call it something else that feels more appealing?
Let’s compare it to skydiving. When you rationalize everything before you jump, you might find it difficult to go on with your adventure. This is the reason why instructors tell people to simply jump in 3. Just do it.
Let go of the idea that everything you need to do should be perfect. The idea of perfection can cripple you from making progress. Simply start, doing so can alleviate any anxiety and unrealistic expectations you have associated with the task. Aim for great work, yes, but tell perfectionism to sit in the corner because you’re letting reality do its magic.
Make your tasks fun for you. If you have a competitive nature, compete with yourself on finishing your to-do list. Create these fun goals for yourself instead, getting them done before people even ask you for them.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
By letting go of the idea that everything you need to do should be perfect, you won’t find yourself crippled by perfectionism. You will be more enthusiastic about doing your tasks on time. Because you are finally embracing the idea of providing results over attaining perfection, you can now proceed with your task with less analysis paralysis and anxiety.
#3 “I don’t feel good enough.”
How to Tell When You Have It:
No matter what you do, you feel like you can’t measure up to the expectations of people around you. Despite receiving compliments and commendations, you still feel like a fraud, unworthy of all these recognitions.
Potential Underlying Issue:
Unhealed trauma from years of bullying and or criticism.
What You Can Work On:
Healing self-esteem and self-worth.
Suggested Call To Action:
Trauma isn’t about shaking hands and anxiety. A response to trauma can also be evident in feeling like an impostor all your life. You don’t believe compliments easily, and you find it hard to actually grasp the meaning of self-confidence. Despite all your efforts to improve, there’s always that little voice inside your head telling you that you can’t.
Finding healing for your trauma, like Intuitive Energy Healing which focuses on emotional healing and emotional release, can do wonders to your wounds from years of bullying and criticism. When you heal, you will eventually notice that the discouraging, demeaning voices will start to disappear, giving you true ownership of your greatness.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
After going through healing, notice how you respond to people’s compliments. Do you believe them more? Have a confidence check every time you enter the room – do you feel a surge of confidence and excitement instead of dread? Do you now feel worthy of great things because you know you can do them?
#4 “I say yes to everything and I’m exhausted.”
How to Tell if You Have It:
Do you always find yourself committing to something you don’t want to do after all? Even if you already have a swamped to-do list, you find it difficult to say no? You’re exhausted, frustrated, but saying no feels rude to you.
Potential Underlying Issue:
You have not set healthy boundaries. You feel like saying NO is completely rude.
What You Can Work On: Boundaries
Call to Action:
Accept the idea that you don’t have to do everything for everyone. You are human; you are not a machine, and you’re not a superhero. If you feel like every problem is always your responsibility to solve, remember that that is not true. You only have a limited capacity. Remember that saying no to honor your overall health is not rude.
Set healthy boundaries and create realistic expectations with people working with you so they will know where you stand. After saying no to requests, you can also take the time to calmly explain your reason to avoid miscommunication.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You are now more inclined to say no when people ask for things that take away your inner peace. You finally enjoy healthy boundaries that people respect and understand.
#5 “I get blamed for things even when it’s not my fault.”
How to Tell if You Have It:
You’re fed up with all the drama thrown in your way even without you asking for it. You are over negative talks, and you just want to let people know you’re not a pushover.
Potential Underlying Issue:
There isn’t any healthy communication going around. You have no healthy boundaries set yet.
What You Can Work On: Healthy communication and boundaries.
Suggested Call to Action:
Do you struggle with sharing and expressing your thoughts? Are you worried that by defending and explaining yourself, you will only get entangled in a toxic confrontation?
You can start with practicing healthy communication – one that does not put the other in defense mode. By positively communicating your thoughts and feelings, the other party might also handle any expression of thoughts in a better way.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You can now deliver your thoughts and feelings in a healthy way. You are now not worried about offending people because you communicate proactively.
#6 “I often feel emotionally overwhelmed and soak up people’s emotions.”
How to Tell if You Have It:
When people share their struggles with you, your first instinct is to solve it. This response leaves you emotionally exhausted all the time. It seems as though you take in people’s emotions and carry them yourself.
Potential Underlying Issue:
You’re an empath. You are susceptible to soaking up people’s emotions that lead you to feel mentally drained, zapped of energy, and or emotionally overwhelmed often.
What You Can Work On: Emotional healing and empowerment.
Call to Action:
First, you can address your struggle with feeling people’s emotions deeply. You can view every emotion through an objective lens. Instead of feeling their pain, anger, or restlessness, you can instead ask “Is this something I can solve?” or “Do I have enough energy to deal with this or should I just let this go?”
When you find yourself already overwhelmed with all the emotional burdens you are getting, consider letting go of these burdens through Intuitive Healing which focuses on emotional healing. These healing sessions involve severing emotional cords and energy blockages that might be wearing you down.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You now have an empowered response to emotional burdens coming your way. You finally know what to do to prevent the emotions from other people from consuming you.
#7 “I feel like I’m like a ticking time bomb, ready to blow up with stress and anger.”
How to Know if You Have It:
You now begin to notice that you’re grouchier than usual. You snap at people, and you can’t seem to have mental or emotional space for proactive, gentle conversations.
Potential Underlying Issue:
You’re overwhelmed with stress.
What You Can Work On:
Stress management, Reiki healing, and emotional release through Intuitive Energy Healing.
Call to Action:
Find a release for your build-up stress. This could mean taking a walk to refresh your mind or going on a much-needed vacation so you can reset your stress bucket. You can also take Reiki healing sessions which can help you take a break from the world, and rejuvenate positive energy within you.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You are now more proactive in dealing with stressors. You acknowledge that not everything deserves your attention and emotions. You know which problems to worry about, and problems you can just let go of.
#8 “I can never seem to make time to do the things I want to do.”
How to Know You Have It:
You’ve always wanted to go to Peru, but you’re always swamped with work. Pursuing a business has been on your list forever, but you can’t seem to find the time to do it. There are so many things you want to do, but you don’t seem to have the bandwidth to do them all.
Potential Underlying Issue:
Prioritization.
What You Can Work On:
Self-care, Self-love, Time management, and prioritization.
Call to Action:
Whatever you do, don’t forget to leave something for yourself. Whether it’s to go on a dream trip, or pursue a goal, remember to live for yourself, too. Not just for your bosses or for your work.
Start with making priorities and letting go of time-consuming activities that might be holding you back from doing the things you’ve always wanted to do. Leave a time block on your schedule to exclusively do things for you and your goals.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You’re now more excited about the future. You are no longer bitter about your work or responsibilities because you realize they help you get closer to your dreams. Your goals and bucket list must-haves now feel more realistic because you are actually doing things that are making them a reality.
#9 “I don’t like being by myself. I always look for companionship and I’m starting to feel that this is unhealthy.”
How to Tell if You Have It:
Loneliness can be daunting. The thought of eating alone makes you feel self-conscious. Going out alone can feel nerve-wracking. You feel judged or even feel like you have to pretend that you’re having a good time alone when you couldn’t feel less uncomfortable. You may make extra efforts to connect with people even when you don’t feel the chemistry. But being with people you don’t find interesting can make you feel just as lonely or even more lonely sometimes. There is beauty in spending time alone if you start learning how to appreciate it. I’ve been there! It’s a beautiful step towards self-love. Expecting others to make you less lonely or even whole doesn’t work, unfortunately. Only we can ultimately fill ourselves with what we exactly need and no one else can do that but ourselves. It’s the one huge lesson in life that we all have to face on our own.
Loneliness often occurs on a deeper level for people who have been forced to grow up independently at an early age. And in that case, it’s easy to become co-dependent too. It can also happen a lot for people who feel like it’s hard to fit in with a crowd and often feel misunderstood.
Potential Underlying Issue:
What You Can Work On: Emotional Healing. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Practice Self-Love.
Call to Action:
Talking about your loneliness with someone you trust, a professional counselor, therapist, coach or healer could do wonders could be a wonderful opening to self-exploration and self-discovery.
Intuitive Energy Healing with a focus on emotional release can help with releasing the roots of loneliness and repressed emotions associated with it (such as depression, shame, anxiousness) that may have found a residence in your body. If you haven’t picked up by now, I’m a huge believer that unsolved repressed emotions stay in your body and create energy blockages that can physically manifest into an injury, illness, or chronic condition depending on the depth of the emotional wound. For example, if someone is feeling overly anxious and sad about feeling deeply lonely, it can create a lot of stress in the adrenals, causing spikes in cortisol which makes a person feel edgy. Long-term issues in extreme cases could impact the immune system, causing gut issues, adrenal fatigue and from there further inflammation in your body such as skin issues, abscesses, or gastrointestinal issues that lead to chronic flare-ups, kidney or bladder issues. These examples are not intended to scare you, but rather for informative purposes. I’m an advocate for alternative preventative healing so if you’re open to it, healing repressed emotions and energy blockages internally could do huge wonders for you long-term.
On another note, if dining at a restaurant alone may feel like too big of a step, how about having a coffee date with yourself to start with? Or eating at a small cafe with a lovely book? Part of getting comfortable with the uncomfortable in my opinion is doing some of your favorite things you love, or things you’re curious about in smaller, more manageable ways. That’s an act of kind, self-love right there.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
Feeling less lonely when you’re doing things on your own is an obvious sign of development. If previously you weren’t comfortable with having a cup of coffee on your own so you’d take it away instead, but now you’re able to enjoy half a cup or a full cup of coffee at a cafe, that’s 50%-100% more than what you were able to do before, which is pretty remarkable. The grass is always greener on the other side. What may seem easy to you may not be for others so remember not to compare your journey with someone else’s, especially not with someone else’s on Instagram.
#10 “I can’t turn my brain off. I’m overwhelmed with thoughts.”
How to Tell if You Have It:
“Peace of mind” is an alien feeling for you. Somehow, you always find yourself consumed with stressful thoughts. What’s worse is that you can’t seem to silence them whatever you do. You end up getting more stressed, losing a restful sleep, and feeling all over the place.
Potential Underlying Issue:
Stress Management
What You Can Work On:
Mindfulness, mental and emotional relief, and emotional release.
Suggested Call to Action:
If your thoughts are triggered by your worries, you can practice becoming more mindful. Getting in touch with the now allows us to just focus on the moment – no worries about the future, no concerns about something. Practicing mindfulness and starting a mindfulness journal can help you realize that hey, there’s a practical way of addressing your concerns. You don’t need to always be consumed by your fears.
Another remedy is Reiki. This traditional Japanese form of healing enables you to quiet and rest your mind. The Reiki healing sessions restore balance in your body by releasing negative energy and channeling in more positive energy leaving you to feel restored and deeply relaxed on a holistic level. There are many more benefits of Reiki. Reiki invites you to be in the present moment, giving you a beautiful taste of what mindfulness really feels like. The other thing is, Reiki is a safe, alternative treatment that is complementary to all other treatments and therapies.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You finally know how to deal with thoughts and worries the healthy way. You are more mindful in addressing pressing thoughts. You recognize that your mental and emotional energy is limited, you don’t have to worry about everything.
#11 “I feel a lack of intimacy with my partner.”
How to Tell if You Have It:
You currently struggle in finding the fire in your relationship. It’s as if you no longer feel the spark, and you want it back.
Potential Underlying Issue:
Unrealistic and unmet expectations.
What You Can Work On:
Reduce your expectations. Create and practice small steps towards emotional intimacy to become aligned again. Emotional Healing
Call to Action:
Relationships portrayed by the media are different from real life. In reality, you have to be gritty in handling relationships, it’s always about making a daily choice of choosing your companionship.
Instead of thinking you’re missing out on perfect dates, consider going to dates that you actually enjoy. Those dates might be as simple as enjoying a cup of coffee instead of something extravagant like a candlelit dinner in a restaurant. Find an activity you enjoy together. Also, take cues from your partner, what do you think he, she or they want? Taking into consideration their unmet needs can also help you plan your dates better.
How to Evaluate Your Success:
You finally acknowledge that igniting your love once again can be as simple as engaging in a meaningful conversation. You don’t need anything extravagant, although that’s nice from time to time, more importantly, in a meaningful way to you as a couple, to bring back the fire to your love story.
Further Your Self-Growth Ahead:
2022 is a year brimming with hope and new beginnings. I’m sure we’re all excited to be “out with the old and in with the new.” However, in the process of changing, let’s not forget to get into the heart of things. Taking care of a problem from the very root brings about a change like no other. 2022 is a year focused on the heart, home, healing, love, and relationships according to numerology. I’ll be sharing more about that in detail soon, be on the lookout!
And even if you’re reading this post in the middle of a new year, it doesn’t matter. Taking steps towards self-growth can be done anytime, even starting tomorrow so go on, dive in. I’m excited for you!
If you would like a little extra help, guidance, or energy healing to start this process, learn more about what I offer, or schedule in-person or online sessions here.
