Do you make New Year’s resolutions?

Do they work for you?

I’ve never been good at making and keeping New Year’s resolutions.

Why? Because I often feel overwhelmed by Near Year’s resolutions, don’t know where to start, so I give up before I even begin.

Sound familiar?

Goals, however I think are good things to have. (And not just at New Year!) Actually, I think goals very important to make. I constantly set goals for myself from everything from running to work. But the thing about goals is that I know it’s a journey which isn’t lineal. Goals should always be assessed and adapted.

And it’s always important create achievable goals. When those goals are achieved, you set new ones.

An easy example. When I go running I set a goal for how long I’m going to run without taking a break. So I’ll tell myself, ‘run till the bridge,’ and when I approach the bridge I’ll assess how I’m doing. If I assess that I can keep going I’ll set a new goal, ‘run till the pond,’ and when I reach the pond I’ll make another assessment. And so it continues.

By creating accessible goals, it not only gives us the ability to constantly reassess what is best for ourselves, but it also gives us the confidence to keep going. To trust in ourselves. And self-trust, self-confidence is key to living a happier, less anxiety filled life.

Last year one of the goals I set myself was to learn and implement ways to relieve fatigue and Long Covid so I could better support my husband and myself through our struggles with the pandemic and having COVID.

I’ll admit it was not the most direct journey, or the easiest one. Lots of times I felt overwhelmed with the stress, anxiety and pain of the pandemic. But the more I worked through it, the better I felt and the more confidence I had to continue going forward with it.

The first goal I set was to join workshops for fatigue and Long Covid. One of them was given by Fiona Agombar, a yoga therapist who specializes in chronic fatigue. I was so inspired by her workshop that I also bought and read her book, Yoga Therapy for Stress, Burnout and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Which was amazing by the way! It's important to learn that there ARE options, there ARE tools we can use to support ourselves, even when everything feels so low and bleak. And sometimes, often, those tools aren't difficult to implement into daily life.

Through the confidence that I was building by learning these tools and techniques, I set my next goal to begin implementing different techniques I learned through these workshops into my life and share them with my husband (who, I’ll admit, wasn’t always a willing participant but in the end he does acknowledge that when he did start implementing simple things into his daily routine, they really helped).

Little by little we tried and tested different techniques and found which ones work best for us.

What worked?

• Checking in with ourselves and assessing how we’re doing in that moment and if we needed to change something what was it? Take a short break, change the way we were breathing, move, etc.
• Bringing awareness to our breath, slowing the breath down, and connecting with it
• Resting more
• Prioritizing what needed to be done in that moment and what could wait till later
• Planning ahead of time and not just trying to cram everything at once
• Pacing, giving our selves grace
• Mindful movement
• Meditation
• Yoga Nidra

And funnily, the more I implemented these things into my life, the more I got to know and understand myself better, the more self-confidence I built. Surprise, surprise. What started out as a goal to only help myself and husband through the pandemic, turned into me quitting my job as an English teacher to become a yoga teacher.

I realized that I couldn’t do everything. And one of the biggest drags on my health, mental and physical, was doing a job I was beginning to despise. I didn’t despise my students. I didn’t despise my colleagues. I didn’t despise my bosses.

What I despised was the fact that I kept pushing aside my dreams and goals because I was scared of going out on my own. Trying something new. I was afraid of failure and that is what kept me back. By taking the time to implement tools into my daily life that actually supported me, gave me the confidence to me follow a dream that had been on the back burner for a long time but I never had the confidence to actually do it.

So I took a leap of faith and jumped into the deep end.

Was it the best time to quit a job? Some would say not with my husband on furlough and our savings dwindling with the constant onslaught of the pandemic. But on the other hand, it was the perfect time to say goodbye to a job that was ripping me apart from the inside out. And let me tell you, it wasn’t helping my relationship with my husband either.

By learning techniques to relieve the pandemic fatigue, stress, anxiety that I was dealing with, plus to support my husband in his struggle with Long Covid, I not only was able to begin to relieve my symptoms but I was also able to really assess where I was and what needed to change to better serve myself and my family.

I have put together a course that is designed to help you do the same.

What’s one of your goals for this new year? Relieve your pandemic fatigue, stress, anxiety? Relieve Long Covid symptoms? Believe in yourself?

And who knows, maybe that goal leads to another which opens doors that you didn’t even know existed.

Breathe Free 4-Week Course

Live online sessions Tuesdays January 18th - February 8th - 7pm CET | 6pm GMT | 10am PST

(Replays available if you can’t make the live sessions!)

What you'll learn over the 4 weeks:

• Breath anatomy
• Breathing techniques
• Stress and anxiety reduction techniques
• Mindful movement
• Creating accessible daily routines
• Body awareness
• Meditation
• PPP: Pace, prioritize, plan
• Journaling techniques

What's included:

• 4, 75-min live sessions (plus replays!)
• PDF handouts for each session
• Weekly guided meditation recordings
• Weekly journal prompts
• Personalizable calendar
• Access to replay and meditation library for 3 months

Join me in the Breathe Free 4-week course!

If you know someone who you think could benefit from the course, please share it with them! If you have any questions, let me know!