Avoid Holiday Hangovers
I wanted to start off this new year with a tip on how to overcome the holiday hangovers that many of us are still experiencing following the last month of craziness.These hangovers can affect every area of our lives, so here are my tips on how to face our post holiday mornings, starting today:
First, start off by acknowledging this simple, but profound truth: * Direction, not Intention equals Destination!
Too many of us are sitting at our kitchen tables trying to come up with some resolutions that involve growing, making more money, getting healthier, or spending more time with family and friends, while others are not setting any new goals or making any resolutions at all.
If you fall into this category and aren't setting any new goals for you in 2015, then by default you are setting a goal and that goal is to not change anything that you are doing. By not picking or setting any new goals you are actually saying I don't want to change anything from what I did last year and based on how things work with entropy, things break down and decay over time if we aren't constantly working on improving them or keeping them healthy and strong.
Is "DECAY" really what you want for yourself this coming year?
Here is the second thing to keep in mind. Your goals are just intentions and not necessarily a direction for yourself. Intentions are not measurable and therefore have no real value. You can say you want to be healthier in 2015, but if you don't actually take some steps to go physically in that direction by watching what you eat, drink and how you exercise physically, emotionally and spiritually, your intentions will actually be revealed as hollow and you, along with everyone else will not see any positive changes in your health.
This is why so many fail at New Year's resolutions. They set them as intentions, but do not take or change direction in their lives to be consistent with the new goals or plans that they say they wanted. This leads to holiday hangovers and leaves many of us with a bad taste in our mouths about holidays and goal setting in general and our personal lives and our businesses suffer the consequences.
Here are some simple steps to help avoid this common malady:
1. Make personal goals for your own health first! We are supposed to be leaders in the health care industry. If you don't lead by prioritizing your own healthcare needs, few will want to follow you down a road to destruction .
2. Write these goals down and then come up with a written plan on how to implement them in a way that can lead to success.
3. Make goals for your family and relationships next. Make sure to involve each of these players in what you want for them and what or how they can help themselves to reach these goals as well.
4. Set some weekly or monthly time aside to meet with yourself or with your family to go over results and tweak your protocols to make sure that your goals are being met.
5. Celebrate your achievements when you reach them. Success doesn't have to be a 100%. It can be incremental and small victories add up to big ones over the course of a year. A 2% increase each month adds up to more than a 25% increase over the coarse of year. That is huge in anyone's book.
7. Constantly look at your actions to make sure that your actions are in alignment with your intentions. Actions are the only thing that can be measured, so if they don't measure up, then don't expect to meet your goals. Actions are what will get you to your destination and will help you eliminate the effects of the holiday hangover.
"Watching Your Back,"
Your Health Coach,
Dr. Ross Coccimiglio