Changes to Make in the New Year

The New Year is actually nothing more than a date on the calendar for most of us. When we consider that there is a separate Hindu calendar, a Parsi calendar, a solar calendar and a lunar calendar, which are followed by different sections of society, this additional New Year is nothing all that special. Unless we actually do something with the New Year that the Roman calendar is giving us.

 As with just about everything else that is a part of our lives, even the time marked by the upcoming New Year is totally under our control. How we choose to spend the days, weeks and months ahead will determine just how special or ordinary this coming year will be. This time round, why not make a commitment to become a better version of yourself and attract a more positive, fulfilling life.

Let’s Make a Workable Plan

Are you sure you want this coming year to be bigger and better than the one that just went by? Then you are going to need two things – A good, well thought out plan and the commitment to stick to this plan. The fact is that just about everyone I know makes up resolutions on the eve of New Year, and just as easily forget about all these great ideas and thoughts within a few weeks. By the end of January people even have trouble remembering the resolutions they had come up with.

As it hardly makes sense to make resolutions that we do not plan on working towards, we are not going to make any resolutions that we can’t keep. Instead we are going to come up with a solid plan to make very specific improvements to different parts of our lives. These will be tiny steps that you feel you can easily accomplish. For instance, you have wanted to lose weight but resolving to join a gym or workout program is just not working out for you. This time you will make a simple but solid plan to exercise exactly five minutes in the day.

Keep it Flexible to Build Upon

Now once you accomplish the small step you have set for yourself, and trust me you will, it is time to move on to the next tiny step. For instance along with five minutes of exercise in the day, you can add drinking a glass of green tea, or maybe eating a fruit to your daily diet. The idea is to keep the step so small that it can be easily established into your daily routine with a little forethought.

Don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t happen quite as smoothly as you would like. There are bound to be some days when you may miss a step. That doesn’t matter as much as making sure that the next day you are back to it. When you are comfortably handling these two steps for about a week, add the next step. It could be anything that you know will make a difference to your health in the long term, including a five minute guided meditation.

If at any time you feel discouraged and feel that such tiny steps are never going to make a big difference, think about the fact that even the ocean is just made up of tiny drops of water.

Affirmation – “I am ready to manifest and welcome my improved self, one tiny step at a time, into the real world.”

Doing the Important Things First

The Important Vs Urgent debate has been given quite an airing recently. Things that are urgent and need to be done right now, may not always be the things that are important for you to do. Pretty much everyone has a busy and hectic schedule these days. From officer executive to housewife, or school kid to college student. No one has time to spare. This means it is important for us to make sure that we utilize the time we have at our disposal wisely.

Identify the Uppers and Downers

There are some things you do in the day that raise your energy levels and make you better prepared to handle your time. These are called “Uppers”. They could include a walk in the morning, a break for a nap after lunch and even some mirror work when you are feeling low. Then there are things that literally seem to suck all the energy and time out of your life. These are the “Downers” which can include having to deal with constant interruptions at work from colleagues, or speaking to a relative who is very demanding or even trying to meet a deadline without taking a break to rejuvenate yourself.

Recognize the Urgent but Unimportant for the Triviality it is

There are some things that need to be done right away and can be termed as urgent. However the more important ones are not always urgent. Don’t waste your time chasing trivial tasks that seem extremely urgent but get you nowhere in the larger scheme of things. Get clear on what you would like to accomplish each day. Have small goals that you need to meet so that you know that you are not wasting your time chasing shadows. Know what is the important stuff you need to handle and break up large projects into smaller tasks that can be done each day.

Take Action on Important Stuff Without Procrastination 

Once you are clear about where you are headed in the long run, you will be able to compartmentalize the Important vs the Urgent tasks that get thrown at you throughout the day. Current challenges that seem unrealistic can become a whole lot more manageable if you start doing the important things first. Don’t do the easy stuff first and wait to do the more difficult things when you have more time to concentrate on it. Start with the difficult things that you know need to be done.  Eliminate the self doubt that makes you push it to the back and feed your belief in your own abilities.

Affirmation : I live in a loving, abundant and harmonious universe and I am grateful. Everything I need for my success is brought to me now.

Pulling in Your Success to You

Each thought you think is creating your future. So far you have been manifesting unconsciously without realizing that what you have been focusing on is becoming a reality. Now you need to do it consciously and pull your success to you. Here is what you need to do in inner work to have that outward appearance of success.

Understand How You Feel

All manifestation work is done first in the head and then translates to the physical world. This means that you need to change your current thinking to success inspiring thinking. Feel your emotions when you think about success, work out what is holding you back. You need to understand both your conscious and subconscious feelings. This is critical to achieving success.  Only when you know where you are going wrong in your thinking will you be able to remedy it.

Believe You Deserve Success

All successful people have no doubt in their heads that they deserve their success. You may like to think you deserve success, but do you really feel it in your bones? Do you really know in your inner most core that you deserve the best relationships, health, and finances that are possible? Here is something that can help you understand if you believe you deserve success or not. Just pick a field and say “I don’t deserve success because…” If you can complete the sentence more than once, you are in trouble. Now focus on this sentence “I deserve to be successful because …” and see what you can come up worth.

Overcome Old Patterns and Past Events

Maybe in the past you didn’t have support. Maybe you were trained by your parents to always be cautious. Perhaps you suffered through a traumatic past event. The reason why your old pattern of holding back developed is not important. What matters is to identify it, and then overcome it. Two simple methods to overcome old patterns are using positive affirmations to develop new beliefs and using EFT or tapping to remove old thought patterns.

Silence Your Inner Critic

Whatever may have happened in the past is not going to happen again in the future. If you really want to be successful you need to be willing to learn lessons from the past and take things forward in the direction you want to move. You have to tell that little voice inside that keeps belittling you that you are better than it thinks. Accept the challenges coming your way with equanimity and silence that internal criticism that you keep feeding yourself.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

One reason a number of people are unable to reach high levels of personal and professional success is because they give up the first time they fail. If it is your dream to write and publish a book and you send it in to a publisher who rejects it, does that mean that you will never be successful? Not at all, it means that you need to send it to another publisher. Think about the many rejection slips that the first Harry Potter book received. Today it’s a bestselling series that changed its author’s life. You need to be able to handle your failures just as well.

Affirmation –“ Prosperity of every kind is drawn to me. I am super successful in everything I undertake.”

What does your “Price Tag” read?

If you feel that you are not being treated with the respect you deserve, or that you are not receiving the love that you give, there may be a problem with how you have marked yourself on your “Price Tag.” What is the value you place on yourself? Your needs and your time? Remember each time you put off something you really want to do because someone else asked you to do something else instead you are marking down your personal value.

Seeing a movie that your friend picked instead of the one you wanted to?

Doing a presentation alone, that your co-worker was supposed to help you with, but backed out of at the last minute?

Being super hero by tacking all the family needs, while everyone else gets to rest and watch television.

Want to go in for a nice spa day and get a massage, but are too busy running errands?

Not speaking up about how you feel simply because you want to keep the peace?

Unable to visit your family on festivals and weddings because your spouse doesn't really want to be there.

They may not seem like much when taken individually, however as each separate incident strikes a mark down in your self worth’s price tag, you gradually lose all value for yourself. You go from being a precious valuable being stored behind glass to being dumped in the “sale” box.

Guess what determines your “Price Tag”?

Self Love!

Loving yourself is not about being conceited or narcissistic. It has got nothing to do with having an excessive sense of self importance or being obsessed with your physical appearance, but it has got everything to do with valuing yourself.

If you hold yourself to other people’s standards of perfection, you are doing yourself a great injustice.  You need to stay authentic to your own self. Live life the way you want to, doing the things that you truly enjoy, rather than doing the things that are popular at the minute.

When you love yourself enough your “Price Tag” gets marked up. You see yourself for the unique, special and absolutely unstoppable force of nature that you really are. There is no doubt about following your own dreams, because in your head they are not dreams but reality waiting to happen.

There is no waiting for the approval of other people. There is no lack of faith in your own abilities to handle just about everything that life throws at you. When you heal your life, you love yourself as much as you truly deserve to be loved. That is when your value on that tag goes up and stays up.

If you are currently having some trouble increasing the value of your personal “Price Tag” you may like to do some mirror work and use these affirmations.

Affirm to yourself – I love and approve of myself. I am the perfect reflection of my beautiful soul. My body, mind, and spirit are radiantly beautiful and deserve to be looked after every single day. I accept and embrace my complete self totally.

Keeping Your Inner Child Happy

A whole lot of time and effort is spent in pursuit of happiness by adults, however ever so often they have no actual idea of what happiness means for them. The way to find out if you are on the path to happiness is to check in with your Inner Child to check if what you are currently doing, makes your Inner Child happy.

Who is your Inner Child?

As a child you were innocent and happy. All your defenses were yet to be built up and you were pretty much vulnerable to anyone who chose to hurt you. You were sensitive enough to be wounded by mere words and resilient enough to suppress those hurts so that you could go ahead and live. Day by day as you grew older you created a protective shield around you. One that made sure you would never feel vulnerable and hurt again, but you also managed to trap your Inner Child behind that wall you constructed. Now as an adult when you want to feel the same innocence, the same joy, you are unable to connect with it, because you are unable to connect with your Inner Child.

What makes your Inner Child happy?

If you really want to be happy you need to find out what makes your Inner Child happy. You need to find the bricks that make up that wall, that shield around your Inner Child and take it down one piece at a time. The bricks are all emotions you have felt strongly in the past, and still feel.  The frustration, the anger, the fear, the injustice, the stress, the embarrassment and just about any feeling that contributed to that wall need to be addressed. When you push though all that, you get to the happy part. The memories of how much fun you could have simply jumping in a muddy puddle in the rain.

Ways to keep your Inner Child happy

Asking yourself what you need is a great place to start communicating with your Inner Child. It can be a question as simple as – What would you like to do today? Then just relax and focus on your Inner Child, imagine yourself at about ten years of age and ask that question again. Now pay attention to what that little child, that little you, is really in the mood to do. Silence that critical adult who has been telling you to run your life in regulations. Instead think of the creative things that you would like to do.

You want to sing? Start right away. Feeling like dancing? Go put on some music. Want to draw or paint? Break out the art supplies. The idea is to find an activity that makes you smile. The creative adult is usually one with a happy Inner Child. Every child is an artist and is not afraid to share the creations she makes with the world. It is time for the adult in your to connect with the child within so that you can remain that joyful creator who happily shares her work with the world. Allow your Inner Child to come out and play.