“Motivation is what gets you started. Commitment is what keeps you going.” ~Jim Rohn
Did you set intentions for the New Year to be more nurturing and loving to yourself? Did you start the year off highly motivated and are starting to feel your resolve wain? Well if so you are not alone. Our best intentions often need to be nurtured. Any time we make a change in our lives we need tools to support the new habit to take root and become part of our new normal.
I have found that at the heart of cultivating sustainable change is choice. Every time we choose to give our attention to our intentions, we further our commitment to growth in our lives. Motivation is sparked by the possibilities embodied in choice and commitment is sustained by inspired action through our everyday choices. Keeping your self-nurturing intentions for the New Year is rooted in your everyday choices.
If you are wondering how your New Year’s Intentions are faring, then look no further than your calendar. Does it reflect your intentions and commitment to be more nurturing to yourself? Do you have time prioritized for your self-nurturing activities? Do you schedule time for those activities in your calendar? If someone else picked up your calendar would they be able to assess what you value by how you spend your time?
If your calendar does not reflect your New Year’s intentions, you are not alone. Many women have difficulty prioritizing time for themselves. When we don’t prioritize time for ourselves, we end up attending to everyone else’s needs and breaking our commitments to ourselves over and over again. Whether our commitments are to exercise, learn to meditate, eat healthy delicious food, be creative, get a massage, or any other self-nurturing activity that would nourish and fill us up, prioritizing time in our schedules is essential.
When we do not prioritize time for ourselves and break our commitments to ourselves we undermine our self-confidence and self-worth. When this happens consistently, we create a powerful cycle that makes nurturing ourselves even more difficult. We may feel guilty and/or bad about ourselves for not following through with our commitments, which fuels our belief that we are not good enough. These feelings of unworthiness then stop us from nurturing ourselves and reinforce the idea that to have value, we must care for everyone else in our lives first leaving little time for us. It is easy to get stuck in this cycle of overwhelm and exhaustion, but it does not have to be that way. We can choose to break the cycle by reestablishing trust with ourselves and keeping our self-nurturing intentions.
So how can you reestablish trust with yourself?
This process begins with self-compassion and self-forgiveness. If you have broken your commitment to yourself, recognize that you made a mistake but you are not a mistake. Forgive yourself for not following through and start anew. There is no need for perfection on this journey of self-nurturing. You have an opportunity to see this experience as a lesson about the growth process and welcome your new awareness with gratitude. Bring attention to what choices you are making about how you spend your time. Our choices will lead to our empowerment and being intentional with our choices will lead to our renewed belief in ourselves.
Try the following ideas to renew your trust and commitment to your self-nurturing practices:
- Restate your self-nurturing intention for the New Year being realistic and specific.
Remember to have realistic expectations for yourself so that you can feel successful. Growth requires stretching outside our comfort zones, but the art of self-nurturing is about following our intuition to know how far to stretch. Trust yourself to know what growth looks like for you and then follow through with your commitment to reinforce this renewed trust in yourself.
- Make a commitment to yourself about how often you will keep your self-nurturing intention.
Define how many times you will engage in your self-nurturing practice during the day, week and/or month. Perhaps you intend to meditate for 5-10 minutes every day, start and/or end your day with gratitude, write in your journal, or sleep 7-8 hours nightly. Maybe you plan to walk in nature three times a week, or practice yoga a few times a week, or get a massage monthly. Be specific so you know what commitment you are making to yourself and can hold yourself accountable with love and kindness.
- Place your self-nurturing intention on your calendar.
To reinforce your commitment and renew your trust in yourself, prioritize time in your schedule for your new practice. Designate time on your calendar for whatever length of time you are committing to. If you use an electronic calendar include an alert to support you in fulfilling your commitment to yourself. When you choose to prioritize yourself you are reminding yourself of your value and worth and the positive impacts will radiate out into your life.
- Develop an affirmation to support your commitment and intention.
Affirmations give fuel to positive change in our lives. When you regularly use affirmations and give yourself permission to nurture yourself, you reinforce your self-worth, intentions, and commitments. Develop a positive affirmation that makes you feel joyful about your self-nurturing intention, like “I am in the process of creating positive change in my life.” Write a permission slip to reinforce your commitment like “I give myself permission to mediate 5-10 minutes every day” and post it where you will see it. Carry your affirmation with you as a gentle and loving reminder. Affirmations and permission giving are empowering and remind us to keep choosing to love, prioritize, and nurture ourselves.
- Acknowledge yourself for your positive growth.
This step is critical in creating sustainable change in our lives and rebuilding trust with ourselves. For many of us, we so easily recognize when we fall short, but are challenged to acknowledge our progress and growth. Part of cultivating a self-nurturing practice is learning to acknowledge ourselves, our inspired action, and our growth. We know from psychologist Rick Hanson that negativity is like velcro to the brain and positivity is like teflon. Therefore we need to feed ourselves more and more positivity so it sticks. You have the power to grow your acknowledgement muscle by identifying your growth and positive choices every day.
- Find an accountability partner to encourage and support you.
We know that when we tell someone else we are going to do something we are more likely to follow through. As you rebuild trust in yourself, invite someone you trust to be your accountability partner. Let them know that you are cultivating your self-nurturing practice and share what you have committed to. Invite the person to check in with you about your progress, encourage you, and remind you that you are worth it! This added support can give you the structure to be consistent and accountable. Developing this accountability relationship will also encourage your friend to nurture herself spreading the empowering message of self-nurturing in the world!
The beautiful thing about self-nurturing is that the more you nurture yourself, the more you see your value and worth and the more you see your value and worth the more you prioritize nurturing yourself which creates a powerful self-sustaining process! So recommit to your self-nurturing intentions for the New Year today and continue to nurture peace in the world from the inside out.
Sending you peace, love and gratitude, Kelley
