The calendar tells me I’m a little late in posting about ‘kicking off the new year’ but an important place to start is with a mantra of mine from Carli Lloyd:
It doesn’t matter how you start, it matters how you finish.
I have always been a person that loves a ‘fresh start’ and nothing provides a better opportunity to hit the reset button than the new calendar year (special kudos to this year given we’re starting a whole new decade!) It’s an opportunity to pause, look back at how things have gone since we last looked back, and to think about what changes we might make to improve in areas that haven’t gone as well as we hoped. In the busy that often follows the holiday period, too often individuals don’t feel like they can ‘take time out’ to reflect. I am using this #bestself2020 guide with my client organizations to encourage them to take the time for themselves, and to go one step further by having a conversation about their reflections with their supervisor. These full sentence conversations can go a long way towards people being willing and able to show up to work and life as their best selves.
A word of caution, sometimes in doing this, people hit the reset button with wildly unrealistic goals which they fail to achieve in the first few weeks… they then feel terrible about themselves and give up and go back to the status quo. This is when you should cue up Carli Lloyd:
It doesn’t matter how you start, it matters how you finish.
Lasting change comes through a series of small, incremental new decisions. If you find yourself off plan, have a conversation with your supervisor, team, partner or coach on how to regroup. Evaluate if your goals were too ambitious, and consider starting with a smaller more permanent change you can build upon. Want help shifting the culture of your organization to encourage everyone’s #bestself? Let me know.