Happy New Year!

I hope you had a great weekend. I also hope you had an opportunity to reflect on all your “wins” for the year just gone by…

If not, I encourage you to do so.

It’s a shame that pretty much every year you see posts on Facebook with sayings like “this year just needs to come to an end”, or similar.

The year before last, I was bad for it... to me, 2016 seemed like an AWFUL year for many reasons. Loved ones lost, big "life shake ups" happening with the aftermath to deal with made me wish the end of the year away, ready for a fresh start.

If there hasn't been any of that, there's usually mention of things the government did wrong (anyone up for a Brexit debate? ;) ), and pretty much anything people can complain about or that we can use to feel sorry for ourselves.

But where’s the focus on things that went well? 

The fun things you did, the relationships you made, the smiles you put on someone’s face (or your own), the goals you ticked off?

I’m not saying to live with blinkers on and just think about happy clappy stuff, because life's not like that and bad stuff DOES happen, but at least give the positive stuff some level of focus…

This being said, I do like to take a look at my shortcomings for the year, things that didn’t go well, and times I fecked up. 

Believe me, there were a lot of them… BUT, that’s not to beat myself up or say the year was a write off... it’s to look for the lessons to make the next year better than the last. I've got a big year coming up in plenty of ways so I HAVE to improve, and I dare say that many of you are in the same boat, whether that's to do with your:

Physique

Health

Career

Relationships

Or whatever else is important to you at this moment in time...

The stuff I think about are things that concern ME. Stuff which doesn't truly affect me directly or that I can't control is not my concern. For example, what the government, or what anyone else for that matter, did/didn't do is NOT my concern when I’m looking back on MY year.

As well as being constructively critical of ourselves, it is, as I said, important to think about all the good stuff. 

Unfortunately, most of us are so busy and so caught up in life that we don’t take time to “stop and smell the roses” and we often overlook or brush off the good that we do/accomplish/have.

I don't do it as regularly as I should, but I write down the things that have gone well for the day in my diary, and chalk up these "wins" - it makes you realise quite often that things ain't so bad, and just seem less than rosy because you're focussing too much on the negatives.

Sometimes a win might be “small” like squeezing in a training session into a very busy day. Other times it might be “big” like taking on a new client, getting a pay rise or booking a holiday.

Some people "poo poo" this kind of thing and hate the idea of anything unconventional like journalling, meditating or even just taking time out to think about stuff.

And that's totally cool. You’ll have to decide if doing something like this is worth trying and is important to you…

Whatever you decide, I really do hope you have an incredible 2018. If there’s anything I can do to help that happen, just hit reply and let me know. :-)

Much love

JB