Change your life in 5 steps over Christmas

Sid Madge says the Christmas break provides an ideal opportunity to reset and define new priorities for your business and personal life.

What will you say about Christmas 2020 in years to come?  You are highly likely to use the word ‘different’! Wherever we live and however conscientiously we stick to the rules, gatherings will be smaller and fewer in number. 

Because it’s been such a hard year you may simply feel a desire to enjoy a few carefree, relaxing days with loved ones.  However, considering the potential consequences you could decide on a completely different approach and use the Christmas break to change your life, both your business life and your personal life. 

Isn’t it funny how so many of us are desperate to celebrate Christmas together even though it is a notoriously stressful time of year, even in ‘normal’ times? Family niggles around the dinner table, eating too much, drinking too much and spending far too much money!  

Making positive change

This year everything got shaken up. Let’s shake them up even further and make sure we kick off 2021 with a plan to make the changes we’ve been thinking about, but doing nothing about for years! 

I believe that micro-moments and tiny interventions are the best approaches to change of any type. Forget about the bold proclamations and focus instead on lots of little shifts. To make 2021 your best year ever I’ve pulled together some micro-moment ideas that might help. Some come from my ‘Meee in a Minute’ books. Each book offers 60 one-minute micro-ideas and insights that can help us to shift our mindset in our life, work and family. They’re also great little stocking fillers (www.meeebooks.com/books/)

• Assess 2020: 

Instead of watching TV after the Christmas dinner and quietly falling asleep why not assess 2020 with your family. Have you learned anything or discovered anything that was unexpected? Did you discover that you didn’t actually need to spend a lot of money to be OK? Did you miss your work or did you discover that you would like to do something else?  

Sure, it’s been a terrible year. And finding something useful or something you are grateful for may be hard, especially if you have lost loved ones or lost your job but see if you can find a silver lining somewhere.

Use those insights to map out a better 2021 and start a weekly gratitude practice. Just taking a few minutes each day or even every week to bring to mind what we are grateful for, can lift our mood and improve our health. 

• Make your anti-bucket list: 

We waste so much time musing over what we could or should do, even when we know in our heart that we probably never will. It’s time to lean into those energy drains and work out if they are important to you or not. 

Instead of lamenting that you should walk for an hour a day or go to the gym three times a week, what will you do? Can you commit to a 20-minute walk?  If you have no intention of doing either, then be honest with yourself. Use the energy you waste beating yourself up about the things you are not doing, to focus on what you will do. 

Instead of getting weighed down with what you might do or should do purge yourself of all the things you definitely won’t do or don’t even want to do. Liberate yourself from the shoulds and coulds and focus on what you want and what you will do to make that happen.  

• Do more of what makes you happy: 

Take a minute to consider where you found happiness this year?  Before Covid, we often thought that we would be happier with a better job, better health, more money, a bigger house, different relationships. What about now? Perhaps you’ve discovered that happiness is in the little moments – spending time with family, meeting friends (socially distanced of course), reading, listening to music, enjoying nice food or a good coffee. 

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, surely, it’s to appreciate the simple things. Take a minute to write down a list of 10 things that make you happy. Make sure those are woven into your weekly life for 2021.  

• Commit to your ongoing learning: 

We live in weird times where lies and nonsense mix with genuine information which is making truth harder to access. And the uncertainty is playing havoc with our mental health. How many of us know someone who has fallen down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole on social media?  Take a few minutes each week to turn off social media and instead dive into TED. 

TED talks believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately the world. Use their ‘Surprise me’ feature where TED will randomly select a presentation for you to watch. Watch a different TED Talk every week. Read more books or enrol in an online course and broaden your horizons. 

We can never truly know what we are passionate about or gifted in unless we experiment with new skills. FutureLearn.com or Udemy.com are great places to start and some of the courses are of great value.  

• Begin with small manageable changes 

How do you want 2021 to be?  We may not be able to travel as freely as we want physically but our mind is always open. We can travel anywhere with our mind. Use it to formulate a plan and begin. Begin a course, begin a job application, begin mapping out your business idea. Begin your exercise practise. Begin your meditation. Whatever you want for 2021 – begin it now. 

Think about what help you need. People are receptive to helping out at this time of year, so ask for help if you need it, or contact people who may be able to lend a hand in the new year. Begin it. Take a minute to consider what you are putting off. Take one positive step toward that today and keep going.  

If ‘different’ is the word for this Christmas, why not push this an make it hugely different. You can start small and gradually make little shifts that will help you create a genuinely new New Year in 2021.