Happy New Year!
These simple words are typically delivered with such a level of enthusiasm that you can’t help feeling the excitement of great expectations.
New year, clean slate, fresh new start, new opportunities, new goals—all of those expressions suggest the opportunity/demand to liberate ourselves from the status quo and create a new and better lifestyle.
In other words, it’s time for the dreaded New Year’s Resolutions.
Don’t do it!!
The arrival of each new year is a great time to renew efforts to improve your life, your lifestyle, your home, property, family relationships, professional status, and more—especially after the promise of 2020 was shattered for many by COVID.
Typical “resolutions” aren’t the answer, however.
We tend to think big and we think broad, as if we’re asking a genie to grant 3 wishes rather than endeavoring to improve ourselves. Typical resolutions, for example, never have building blocks, only splashy results.
The successful path to true, lasting, and joyful change is actually much different.
Before offering my 5 tips for making 2021 the year things finally improve, one final thought: No single “wish” being granted will make life better. Happiness is prismatic and feeling joy, contentment, or simply a lack of anxiety and stress, comes from being able to move a critical mass of life’s many aspects into the harmoniously successful column.
#1. Take the time to create an honest assessment of your lifestyle status and where you stand on the path to achieving goals. Highlight the things that feel most misaligned to create a working list.
#2. Choosing between 2 to 4 things on the list to tackle as 2021 priorities for creating the lifestyle you seek. Why so few? Because you can’t fix everything at once and trying will only invite stress and anxiety and the possibility of failure.
#3. Create your version of a physical or mental vision board that shows what the future looks like with regard to your priority changes. It’s fine to dream big, as long as you also keep the dreams realistic.
#4. Commit yourself to the necessary work for achieving what amounts to a KonMari-style tidying of your life by shedding the things holding you back as you embrace, and achieve, the things that will spark joy.
#5. Don’t give up. No matter what, be resolute. Then celebrate your successes, however small, and convert them into inspiration to reach even higher and make more progress.
Amid the ongoing social distancing of the COVID pandemic, you can also rely on the principles of KonMari organizing and decluttering to help make your home more of a sanctuary.
You’ll find that moving through the process of decluttering physical things will lead to a journey of emotional discovery that helps power and guide your growth in other areas.
So, once again, Happy New Year!
But this time I hope you’ll experience those best wishes with only enthusiasm for the potential the new year brings and not the anxiety that comes from thinking you have to hit home runs with a bunch of resolutions.
If you need help with the process of tidying, decluttering, and transforming your living environment, see the holiday specials on my KonMari packages and rates page.
Also take a few minutes to read the blog post in which I explain that once clients learn about my background as a healthcare professional, I end up helping them with issues that go far beyond decluttering—the same kind of issues that will end up being the ones you choose to tackle in the new year.
To connect, email me at [email protected], or give me a call at (203) 772-8883.