Happy New Year and welcome to 2017! Today’s show is all about embracing who you are and what you want for the new year. Sharon offers alternatives to setting a New Year’s resolution - because let’s face it, most of us don’t follow through on those anyway! She also shares guidance for how you can focus less on trying to reinvent yourself and more on tapping into what's awesome about you right now - and build from there. Our wish for each listener this year is that you can let go of what’s not needed in order to focus on what makes you uniquely you. There is no greater gift to the world than to be yourself.

Ideas Shared: A few questions to consider as you step into the new year

Notice if you have been eagerly awaiting the new year (i.e. can’t wait to put 2016 behind you) or if the shift into January from December was a non-event for you?

What do you wish that this year ahead holds for you?

What do you hope will be different? What do you hope will remain the same?

*

3 alternatives to the new year’s resolution: goals, intentions, themes

• Goals drop you into a level of specificity and provide a sense of drive and action.
• Intentions bring you into the present moment and are more go-with-flow momentum.
• Themes set a tone for where you want to go and draw you forward to a new destination.

* 3 ideas to tap into who you (already!) are

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. – Michelangelo

Simplify

• Focus on what matters most
• Focus on what’s core to who you are
• Let go of the stuff that’s not needed

Do what you love

• Life is too darn short to get caught in a hamster wheel spin cycle of doing what we feel we should do and not what we want to do
• Balance short term wins and long term desires, but do prioritize what you love

Focus on your inner – not outer – game

• Take care of your emotional health
• Listen to the whispers of your soul and heart, not just your head
• Creating quiet (e.g. through exercise, meditation, journaling, etc)
• Receive your own beautiful inner wisdom

Resources and Links:

• For more details on the distinctions between goals, intentions, and themes for the new year, check out this recent blog post Here Comes 2017: No Resolutions Needed.
• For those of you interested in learning more about how to get rid of the excess stuff in your life, I highly recommend Jess Lively’s interview with Bea Johnson on the Lively Show podcast.