MENTAL HEALTH: Don’t let negative self-talk get in the way of your goals this year

The New Year’s Eve fireworks barely fizzle out before people’s attention turns to resolutions and goals for the year ahead. The annual temporal landmark of January can serve as a reenergiser, giving you the jump start you need to make the changes you have been mulling over. It’s often a truly great thing to think about goals and strive for something better.
However, at this time of year you should be especially mindful of what it is that might be guiding the motivation for these changes. There might be a lot of criticism and pressure there.
To avoid getting trapped in a negative thought cycle, simply ask yourself: ‘How do I want to show up and feel in my day-to-day life?’. The answers to this question can form a good basis for understanding the real changes you want to make in your life.

Go gently
When approaching any resolutions or goals, it is very important that you are rooted in a place of compassion. If you turn to criticising yourself in terms of what you could ‘do better’, you are immediately starting to punish yourself, almost without knowing it. And whilst punishment might get you to where you want to be in the short-term, it is compassion that will keep you there.
This is where many of us can go wrong. For example, if you’re looking to triple your bank balance and run a marathon all at the same time, there’s a lot of things that need to happen for this to be achieved. If one or both of these things don’t work out, you could end up further away from the goals than you had been initially because you feel like you failed. Sound familiar? I know I’ve certainly been there in the past. So with this in mind, remember to ease yourself into working towards your goals, and go gently with yourself.

Pace yourself
January can be a tough month as it is. The Christmas lights have been put away for another year, the festive cheer is a distant memory and social interactions have likely become fewer. These are all big adjustments for your mind and body, so it may not be a great idea to start adding a lot more demands to your plate if the only reason is the start of a new calendar year.
If you’re feeling like you might need some more time for adjustment (which is both very natural and common), January is a wonderful time to reflect on the year gone by. I would encourage you to take ten minutes at some stage during the week to sit with some key questions and reflect on them, with no judgement or expectations whatsoever.
Some interesting questions to think about are: What am I leaving behind in 2024? What do I want to bring more of into 2025? Am I happy with my current situation? If not, what is in or out of your control to change?
You can conquer any of the goals you have set for yourself, but make the experience enjoyable and lasting by starting small and building on achievements as the weeks go by. And if it doesn’t work out for you this time, please don’t be discouraged or hard on yourself. Remember, it’s really important to have compassion, especially yourself, so let that be your anchor. Try not to compare or berate yourself if you see other people making strides towards their goals. Like flowers, we all grow and blossom at different paces and different times.

•  Sadhbh Dunne is a qualified life coach based in Westport. She is the founder of Ember Coaching (embercoaching.ie) and can be reached at sadhbh@embercoaching.ie.