New Year, New You! No Thanks

 

It's that time of the year where we make new goals and commitments to improve our lives. 

Every year we add more stress to our already hectic life and we typically only make it a month if we're lucky. Don't get me wrong, I believe in setting goals and new resolutions. I don't believe in setting a ton of unrealistic goals in January every year. 

Setting goals for yourself is a great way to improve your life. However, setting them in January adds a lot of pressure to people because we spend one month out of the year trying to improve everything in our life all at one time. This adds a tremendous amount of stress and often when we don't see results right away we feel like we have failed which opens us up to depression and anxiety. 

This year I have decided to do the exact opposite and not participate in the hoopla of New Year,New You mindset.

I will be going into 2023 doing what I know works for me based on past experiences to lower my stress levels, manage my chronic pain, anxiety,overall health, and work with my autism and ADHD.

Instead of forcing myself to wakeup at a certain time each day, I will continue to wake up when my body is ready and not when an alarm clock tells me too. There is nothing more anxiety-inducing to me than waking up to a loud alarm clock. It causes me to start the day with a ton of anxiety.

Once I am awake I will start the day with coffee on the patio ( no rushing around) . After I have enjoyed a nice slow wakeup to my day I will do my daily meditation practice followed by yoga. 

As someone who suffers from severe anxiety, autism, and ADHD my life revolves around lists and systems for getting things done. I plan out everything that needs to get done and write down how long I think each task will take to get done. 

The shortest tasks are where I start and I take a break between each task. 

This helps me not only control my anxiety but also my chronic pain and I avoid burning out before the day is over. 

Most of the time I manage to tackle everything that needs to be done but on the days that it doesn't work out I don't worry about it. Whatever is left over I just add to the list for the following day and start fresh.

Each month I will set a small achievable goal or "resolution" for myself instead of trying to tackle everything at once. I have found that this way works best for me on both a physical and mental level.