Resolution: choose to be your best self.

Choose to be your best self.

Decide how you want to be perceived, define that behavior, and deliver that person.

As we close 2015 and welcome 2016, it’s a great time for reflection, assessment, and goal setting. All of that can get a little heavy, could bring on frustration, can create some sadness. That’s ok. Sit with it for a bit. Then move on.

Use this reflection to ponder your daily behaviors. Are people hearing you? Understanding you? Feeling your positive connection, positively influenced by your wisdom, impacted by your energy? If the answers are yes, FABULOUS! If you have a few “no’s”, you can tweak your behaviors so you’re more effective. New Year’s Resolutions are a nice idea. Self-awareness and self-discovery are empowering. Using this time of year as a motivator to get yourself on track and then delivering your best self moment by moment… now that’s powerful!

Here are three areas in which you can find inspiration, where you can practice, and where you can earn rewards. Read on and enjoy this podcast, Let It Shine w/ Dave Erickson and Lucinda Kay.

1. Wellness: when you take care of your insides, you’re stronger physically and mentally.
   1. a. Nourish yourself: add more water, veggies, fruit, clean protein and energizing carbs. Whatever the best fuel is for you, make it happen.
   2. Move your body: whether you love to work out or your someone who needs to add core work during commercials, or lunges during phone calls, or parking farther away from a meeting… MOVE!
   3. The endorphins will do wonders for your disposition and your relationships; your physical strength will fuel your mental stamina and creativity.
   4. When you nurture your health and wellness, it overflows into all areas of your life
2. Behaviors: define how you want to be perceived and make it so.
   1. Choose & break it down. For example: today I’ll be “Miss Confident”.
   2. She has tall, strong posture.
   3. She speaks in full sentences and listens carefully.
   4. She says yes out of experience, instead of no out of fear.
   5. She uses her exhales so she appears calm, collected, at-ease.
   6. She looks you in the eye, has a firm/friendly handshake, walks with purpose, etc.
   7. Practice this behavior until it’s second nature, muscle memory, so that no matter how you’re currently feeling (tired, sick, sad, whatever), you can deliver the same, consistent, confident behavior.
3. Replicate life’s experiences: those light bulb moments, those moments when you feel really equipped or empowered or proud or joyful.
   1. For example, you volunteer on a humanitarian project and you demonstrate increased patience. How can you replicate that in daily life?
   2. How did you demonstrate that patience? Did you ask more questions? Did you slow down your pace? Did you change the filter you were using to understand the interaction? Did you choose to serve the other human being instead of giving into your own desires?
   3. Can you now replicate these steps in daily life so that you can experience more patience everyday?

Every moment of every day, you get to choose. You get to feel how you feel, and you get to decide how you’ll respond to those feelings. You get to become whomever you want to be in this world. Yes, it takes self-awareness. Yes, it takes courage. Yes, it takes energy. But all these traits are learned. All these experiences are worth it.

“What goes around, comes around” as my mama always says. We are a reflection of each other. The more goodness you put out, the more you receive.

Congratulations are surviving and thriving in 2015. Let it shine in 2016!