5 Life-Changing Ways to Make 2020 Your Best Year Yet
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As 2019 transitions into the past, you may be reflecting on how much you’ve accomplished. For many of you, the year may have flown by leaving little time to reach the goals you intended to accomplish just one short year ago. Don’t beat yourself up over the lack of progress you may have made in 2019 because… guess what?
You can get right back on track by setting up your 2020 to be your most successful year to date! These 5 valuable tips include practices to set your intentions for your future and ensure that you continue to sustain forward progress the whole year through. Are you ready for the most fulfilling and productive year of your life?
Do these 5 things to guarantee that this year will be way better than your last!
1. Declutter your space
Whether you live in a dorm room, share an apartment, or own your own home; an organized space leads to an organized mind. Can you think of an occasion when your time was wasted looking for something that wasn’t put in its proper place?
Or have you ever sat down to complete a task, only to be distracted by that pile of mail on the counter that needed to be sorted? If you’re anything like me, sorting the pile of mail led to taking out the trash, then wiping down the counters, and so on…Clutter is a distraction, and distractions interfere with thought processes.
Set time aside in the New Year to organize each area of your space and repeat quarterly or monthly to stay on top of it. If you have goals, you will most likely have a list of tasks to get you closer to reaching them. Don’t let clutter stand in the way of your fresh momentum this early in the game. Think of a tidy space as 50 fewer distractions standing in your way to success!
2. Review the last year
One life-changing way to guarantee you see more progress and growth than last year is to audit your year. What things did you do? This practice works best if you document your life by keeping a planner or calendar.
We are going to make two lists. First make a list of all the things that added value to your life, boosted productivity, or rejuvenated you. Now in the coming year, prioritize doing those things twice as much as you did last year. If that means budgeting and finding time to go on two vacations instead of one this year, you will be twice as refreshed and ready for progress than you were last year!
On the second list will be all the things that were counterproductive, wasted your time or slowed momentum. Try to stay away from these activities from now on. The final step is to review your long-term goals. What short term goals will get you closer to the final goal? The short-term goals are your immediate targets to keep on making progress this year.
3. Adopt a healthy habit
Maintaining a strong, healthy body will allow you to sustain progress throughout the year. Of course, we are all bound to run into the occasional setback.
For instance, a seasonal head cold can divert your attention from making forward progress to being knocked down into recovery mode. Whether you aim to drink more water, move your body one more time a week, or cut out processed foods from your diet; adopting a healthy habit to keep you strong enough to work towards your goals, can reduce the number of times throughout the year that your attention is diverted away from progress.
How will you optimize your health?
4. Plan to relax and recover
Start the year out by making sure you get much needed time to relax and recover. If you feel rejuvenated after a weekend to yourself, a trip with your friends, or a massage; then prioritize what rejuvenates you by planning to do them upfront.
Pre-scheduling your recovery time will make it way more likely that you will follow through with it. We can get busy, other obligations can come up, we can procrastinate, and all these things can cause anxiety, which is also counterproductive to progress.
Look at your calendar and plan out the time you want to take off, request time from work if necessary, and book the trips! This will ensure that you’ll have something to look forward to, that you’ll save money and reduce unnecessary stress. A win, win, win for a better year!
5. Do a fertility check-in
This is a great time to do a reproductive check-in. Do you want children in the future? If so, how many? How old are you and are you on track time-wise to achieving that? Believe it or not, you have some control over your fertility future and arming yourself with knowledge can allow you to form a plan.
In turn, having a plan can reduce stress and uncertainty that you may be holding onto surrounding your future, allowing you to focus on what you can control right now. What’s more, thinking about your reproductive goals and having a plan can save you time and expenses in the years to come.
If you’re wondering where to start in planning for your fertility future, scheduling a free consultation with Fertility United is a great start. Whether you choose to monitor markers of fertility, freeze your eggs, or start to grow your family in 2020; a plan is a wonderful first step towards progress.
Implementing these five tools as we transition into a new year will help you begin this year feeling prepared, balanced, and intentional. I believe we can all achieve our dreams if we keep making progress, putting in the effort with intention, and remembering why we set goals in the first place. Sending love, light, and positivity for 2020 to be your best year yet!