New Year Live

Welcome, Cadre family. Getting started on this first live stream of the new year and super excited to be sharing this morning with you. I'm going to give it a minute or so for people to hop on. I know this isn't my usual time. If you're new here, my name is Eric. I'm a clinical mental health counselor here to provide tools, resources, information to help you in your journey of wellness, mental health, whatever that looks like for you and the reason for you being on this platform. We're excited to have you.

Yeah. As we hop into 2024, there's a lot of symbolism that goes with beginnings and ends, a lot of opportunity for reflection, as well as a lot of opportunity for looking forward what feels like space to start. Some of these goals we didn't quite have room for in our last year, or maybe things that became apparent in the last year, 2023. And so today, that's really what I want to talk about and think about is, as we're moving into the new year, happy new year to you, as well as we move into the new year, often what we do is we set these resolutions right, these New Year's resolutions, and a lot of times we see a big jump in, whether it's gym memberships or healthy eating habits or things like that in the first month, because we got a lot of motivation, we're excited, and then maybe month two comes around.

We're still doing it, but it's a little bit tougher. Some of the other realities of life we remember kind of play a part of how much we follow up with those goals. And a few months later, you know, we're kind of off the wagon now, and we've fallen off of these goals that we were super motivated and passionate about. And with that can come a lot of shame or guilt or difficult emotions, because we built up something in our idea, in our mind, in which the reality didn't reflect what we thought would come from engaging those goals.

And this is the point. As you're starting this new year and you may have some resolutions, or maybe you're somewhat like me and for years have given up on resolutions and trying to find a happy medium in there. As we look forward and we set some goals, some resolutions for ourselves in the new year, one thing I want you to keep in mind is acceptance. And when I say acceptance, what I mean is often what comes up that gets in the way of us continuing our goals is our resistance to the real struggle that it takes to incorporate these new things in our lives, our imagination, our mind, likes to idealize what these goals, what these new parts of our life are going to look like and how it's going to feel to have those things in our lives.

But often our imagination, our idea of what those things are like, don't match the reality. And so we bump up against the struggle, the reality that those positive feelings aren't always there when we're starting something new. m. Not seeing the results we wanted to see right away doing it wrong. Those things are all going to be a part of this process, process of starting a new goal. And if we anticipate that the goal is going to be easy and just fall straight into our life, and if it doesn't, then we have to give up on it, we're going to follow that same pattern.

And so rather than only anticipating the good outcomes that can come from starting these resolutions, recognize that it is going to be a struggle. That struggle is present in all the decisions we make. It's just we're choosing what struggles we want to have. We're choosing one thing prioritized over other things. And so setting your mindset on that acceptance is going to help you carry through when those things get difficult. We've already anticipated the difficulty. In fact, maybe we're leaning into it, excited to see what we can learn when we bump up to these obstacles in our journey.

Yeah, and so I love this comment here. Mid February, most January new gym members just disappear from the gym. And that's exactly right. And a lot of that is because it's difficult to start a new routine. And we tend to jump headfirst thinking it should be easier, maybe if we work ourselves super hard right away, stick out for the long run. But what we're prioritizing as we go into the gym and what we're anticipating, if it's the gym or elsewhere, of what that new goal is going to look like in their lives is going to have a big influence of when that struggle comes up, when maybe something, you know, we want to sleep in the extra hour that we normally try to make time for the gym.

What's going to help us to decide, you know what? This is worth it for me to get out, even though I haven't felt the results from the gym yet, even though it's been hard, I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, other people maybe look at me when I'm at the gym and that makes me uncomfortable. All these obstacles and challenges are also opportunities if we allow them to be. If we have some acceptance of the fact that those things are going to exist, we try anything new. So thank you all for joining me this morning.

I have a little update. My time that I go live weekly is going to change a little bit as I am starting a new job here in the new year. So that's kind of changing my schedule. So I'm looking at probably in the mornings on the weekend and I may try morning time throughout the week. So I might try a few times over these next few weeks just to see what's a good fit. And so I'll put an update in the community chat when I nail down a good time for those ongoing, consistent live streams. But with that, happy New Year everyone.

If you have some new goals for this 2024 year, I encourage you to recognize and lean into the struggle. Recognize that it is going to be hard, hard, and you might miss the mark along that journey, but that's a part of it and a very valuable part of starting these new paths in our lives. Take care. See ya.