As we enter the holiday season many are getting hyped and buzzed with holiday cheer. It is an exciting time in everyone’s year. I LOVE this time of year! It is filled with family, great food, love and shopping. Another great event coming up right after all the hustle and bustle of Christmas is New Years. With the new year comes new resolutions. Have you started thinking about yours yet? As mothers we tend to easily lose focus on ourselves or even the time of day it is (seriously I never know what day it is anymore). Well ladies, it is time to start thinking of the new year and all the possibility that is in store! I am a firm believer on setting goals of big proportions, but I also know there are specific small daily goals to implement in making the big goals happen. So, have you started considering what you want in the upcoming year as a mother and as a woman?
I have had some years of personal development to get my mind right for goal digging and how to set up for success in a new year. Now don’t for a second think that I am an expert. There is always more room to grow and I am a firm believer if you aren’t growing, you’re dying. Jim Rohn says it best, “If you ever start feeling like you have all the answers you better start asking new questions!” Before though, I waited until the new year to make my goals. Probably around mid-January when my Christmas tree was still staring me in the face and I was wondering just what I wanted to do and accomplish in the new year. I pondered for a good week, maybe wrote my ideas down and continued on my in and out mundane routine and all those thoughts of goals and what not fell aside. Then it was Christmas and the holiday season once more and again, the same plan of failure took place. Until I learned I needed to implement my goals, my desires, and my dreams well before the new year to really create a habit of performance in obtaining them. My question to you now is have you started to prepare yourself and your family for the upcoming year?
There are some good habits in our household we implement daily to not only help us live more fulfilled lives but also daily tasks we do to hold us accountable to our dreams and goals. Starting with something I think we all feel is very important is an Attitude of Gratitude. What is this you are asking? Or maybe how might you 
implement this into your daily routine? Every single morning I wake up before I do anything else, I thank God for another day of life and an opportunity to fulfill what he put me on the earth to do. Some days it isn’t easy that’s for sure. I thank him for waking up and being able to breathe without complications and for a healthy body. I start my day by checking off everything on my list I am thankful for. Simply having a roof over my head. A place to call home. Somewhere to raise Michael and have running water and electricity. Anything and everything I am thankful for in the moment. Some days I repeat myself…other days I just want to start off complaining because Michael didn’t sleep at ALL the night before. Let me tell ya, momma needs her beauty sleep! Some mornings it truly is so hard to have an Attitude of Gratitude when you haven’t slept more than 2 hours at a time weeks straight, but I find a way to do it. And at some other point I probably end up crying because mom guilt sets in, sigh. Or maybe I’ll just blame my mom for crying so much now…its in the genes, thanks and sorry mom. 😊 My first tip to you, an attitude of gratitude. There is a great book on the topic called, “Gratitude Works”.
Creating your daily affirmations is another terrific daily habit to implement into your family. Every morning after I wash my face and brush my teeth I state to myself my daily affirmations and then I read aloud Michaels daily affirmations to him. He may be young now, but I can tell you one thing, he lights up every morning when I speak his daily affirmations to him. It is never too early to read to your kids and It is never too early to start teaching good habits. What are daily affirmations? Positive daily affirmations are simply self-confident boosting sayings you can use to kick start your self-esteem and improve your general self-image. Examples of positive affirmation as mothers and women are:
- I am a wonderful mother
- I am strong
- I am beautiful
- I am a powerful woman of God
- I make my children happy
- I provide an abundance of love, nurturing, smiles, material things, everything my kids want, I can easily provide for them.
- I help make my children’s world a better place
- I love my children with all of me
There are an infinite amount of positive daily affirmations you can say to start implementing and believing. Above are just a few examples if you don’t know where to start. The ones above are broad and not specific to goal setting daily affirmations but they are a great start! I have about 12 or so positive daily affirmations I say every morning. Mixed in are some general ones like those above and some extremely specific ones to my goals and what I want to accomplish in the quarter. The biggest thing when writing down your daily affirmations is to make them as specific as possible to what you want. Say you want to get a new car this year. Instead of saying, “I am going to get a new car this year.” Say, “I am purchasing a new black BMW 550I sport edition M package from the Monrovia dealership with payments below 600.” This is a specific desire and you are telling yourself what you are wanting and inevitably going to accomplish. A bunch of people want to lose weight, especially us mommas who still have that “baby weight” hanging around. Another great example of a daily affirmation for this topic would be, “I am losing my baby weight. Going to the gym on a consistent basis of 4 days a week is showing its results. I am on my way to losing those last 20 pounds.” My second tip to you is writing down specific, present and goal oriented daily affirmations. Don’t forget to have your kiddos make some for themselves too! Something simple and encouraging for them. With Michael I keep it to 4 simple affirmations. “I am strong. I am handsome. I am smart. I am courageous.” These are what I repeat for Michael every morning and like I said, he lights up every morning while it is our affirmation time.
Making a vision board is a fun and great way to get your mind right for the new year! Have some old magazines laying around? Grab some scissors, glue, magazines, a small poster board and get creative! One thing I love ab
out vision boards is there are no limits. It is all for you and what you desire or what you yearn for. That new car you are talking about? Find a picture of it and put it on there! The great thing about making a vision board is your kids can jump in on the fun and make one too. Family night just got a whole lot more ambitious. When you explain what a vision board is to them, because we know they are going to ask, tell them to put some things they enjoy doing with you on there. Find pictures of stuff they would want to do in the next year and tell them it can be anything! Doing this will also give you a good amount of ideas to take them to do and you will come out with a bunch of cool points. We are all cool moms, aren’t we? Michael is too young obviously for vision board participation, but I cannot wait to have him create one when he is old enough. As for you though, put down things you aspire to have over the next year to five years. You can put whatever you want on there, nothing will sound crazy or be too crazy because it is your board and your dreams and you are making it for you. Once you have these made, make sure to put the boards somewhere you can see them daily. Use it as fuel to remind you why you got up (and may or may not have put on pants) in the first place. Tip 3: create a vision board you can look at daily.
Above are some fantastic habits to start creating in your household and now is a fantastic time to start them! I know it is a hectic time of year and it may be the last thing you even want to think about until the holiday season is over. Starting these practices are an easy step in getting excited for the new year. However bad, awful, good or great of a year it has been, doing these with your baby will inevitably get you excited about the upcoming year. Reciting positive daily affirmations to yourself and with your baby will help you maybe gain back some confidence I know can get sent to the back burner. Saying I am beautiful in the mirror will do wonders on your self-image! Creating a vision board to look at every day with all your goals, wants and dreams is a great reminder to yourself to keep going. To keep pushing through whatever battle it is you are facing right now. Continue putting up the good fight and stay positive as hard as it may be. Keeping an attitude of gratitude in the house will help remind you those days you are wondering why. Or the days you want to give up, start saying thank you aloud for a few things and watch your attitude change.
A great craft you can have your kids participate in is a thankful jar. Start by having them fill up a jar with at least 10-20 things they are thankful for on individual pieces of paper. When they are say throwing a tantrum or having a bad day, take them over to the thankful jar and pull out one of their thankful papers. If they can read have them read aloud what they are thankful for and if they can’t, read with them what they have written down. Then have them tell you one new thing they are thankful for to replace the other piece of paper.
I truly feel starting your year already having these elements in place in your house will kick start you to have a better opportunity for success whatever it may look like for you. In my next post about getting the new year started right I am going to go over slaying your goals like a mom boss. So, stay tuned and if you haven’t yet, subscribe to get updated on my latest posts! Cheers!