I don’t like the cliche’ of making New Year resolutions. I prefer to say setting goals because in my mind for some reason they are more achievable. We are nearing the end of the year so this is the perfect time to start aggressively editing your life and work on improving your emotional self-care. Generally speaking, aggressively editing your life means taking inventory. It means starting big and narrowing your goals down to something more attainable and achievable (see example below). It’s a major tool for addressing our emotional self-care. The self-care habits that addresses our well-being and our overall emotional health.
When you aggressively edit, you work on not only identifying the barriers that hold you back but you actively start working on eliminating those barriers. I’ve broken the four questions below into the following pillars.
- Where you are in your life right now?–The State of Uncertainty: at this stage you’re likely still trying to figure out what you want and or you’re trying to make changes. There may still be some chaos in your life at this stage. You’re not sure which steps to take or how to start making changes.
- Where do you want to be in life?–The State of Clarity: at this stage you have gained a little more understanding of what you want and where you want to be. Some of you may have done an analysis of what you don’t want in order to get an understanding of what it is you do want (e.g. not wanting to live paycheck to paycheck means you know that you want to have a better savings or get a second job).
- What barriers are in your way?–The State of Clarity: this also falls under the state of clarity because after determining what you want, you will learn what barriers stand in the way and some of you might know what steps you should take to eliminate those barriers.
- What steps do you need to take to get where you want to be?—Setting Goals and Making Strides: at this stage you’ve set some tangible goals because you’ve address the barriers that are potentially holding you back. In so doing, you’re also able to make strides or work towards the goals that will help you get to where you want to be in your life.
I think we’ve all asked ourselves those questions before but unfortunately for most of us, it’s stops at the questions. We don’t follow through because we don’t know where to start. These are loaded questions because for many for us several different bullet points fall under each category e.g. you want to start a business, you want to lose weight, you want to save more money, you want a divorce, etc. this can all be very overwhelming. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The trick is to prioritize these goals; think about the ones that take precedence in your life right now.
I started my blog about a month before I decided to go public with it. I started it as a hobby so I would have something creative and meaningful to do after work. I didn’t share it on social media initially because of fear; fear of judgement and because I’m not an expert in self-care, so who am I to try and tell others how to take care of themselves, when I’m still in the process of trying to figure things out for myself. But I did it anyway. Stepping out on fear has forced me to push myself to become more creative and to be more accountable with my self-care needs, It has forced me to think about how I can create better content to ensure that my readers are constantly engaged. Stepping out on fear has allowed me to not be fearful anymore. I can’t say for sure that this is my life’s calling but I know that by not letting fear hold me back, I’m one step closer to living up to my full potential. Stepping out on fear is forcing me to become a better version of myself because if I’m encouraging you to make changes in your life, I have to make sure that I’m doing the same as well. I shared this story in hopes that it will inspire you. I know for some of us we avoid projects like these (editing your life) because we’re holding on to fear.
I created a FREE five page emotional self-care worksheet to help us create space to work on our emotional self-care. Let’s do a brain dump, and start aggressively editing our lives. Doing this will help us move towards the kind of life we want to live. By the way, aggressively editing your life may not always mean buying a new home, saving money, or going back to school. For some of us, aggressively editing might mean letting go of bullshit loyalty relationships–these are relationships that we hold on to because “you go way back” but these people are either holding you back or they hold no real purpose or value in your life anymore. I’m not encouraging you to cut all ties, but you should consider setting boundaries, especially if these people are hindering your growth or potential.
Working on this post and the worksheets made me realize that I have to give more attention to my emotional self-care. I plan on taking full advantage of these resources. Based on how things go, I might do a follow up blog somewhere down the line (maybe mid 2021) with additional worksheets to move you even further along your journey. Would you be interested? Let’s Chat!
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