Christmas has come to a gentle end and you’ve spent a good time recharging, allowing yourself to relax, and reconnecting with people you care about. You then celebrated the new year and felt the excitement for the year ahead. Maybe some daunting feelings about heading back to your workload, but hopefully optimism for growth and change. Here, millennial speaker, Sam Jones gives his guide to getting your new year off to a great start!
Studies show that the vast majority of people maintain this optimistic energy of change until around the 15th January. Then the gloom can set in as the days remain short, the workloads grow and the inevitability of stresses and pressures knock you back into old habits and mindsets.
Add to it the ‘falling-off-the-wagon’ on a few of your well-intentioned but probably overly-ambitious plans for 2020 and you have a recipe for feeling a little, meh.
I want you to be proactive and join in the 4% of people who maintain a good level of positive energy and progressive mindset throughout January and February!
Follow a few of these quick tips to bulletproof yourself and your team to the winter slump. Share them with your team to inspire them to be in the 4% with you.
Be consistent in action instead of grandiose in ideas. Ambition is a wonderful attribute and much needed, but too often at these early stages of the year most people fall short on high expectations instead of exceeding challenging yet achievable ones. We want you to breed confidence in the early part of the year, so try this:
It’s easy to surrender to the challenge of maintaining motivation when the post New Year elation has faded. Instead, be aggressive and stand up to the easy way of shrinking into old habits.
To do this you can engage in some tasks and challenges that are small but you do with absolute assertiveness.
Choose to set your alarm 30 minutes earlier for seven days to embrace the darkness, ask your leadership for opportunities to take on more responsibility, or invest money into your personal growth to double-down on yourself.
These only need to be small steps, as they help you embody the mindset of rising up to challenges instead of slipping back and surrendering.
We said that if you maintain that fresh, motivated attitude of growth past 15th January you are in the 4%. That is worth some celebrating right?
Psychologically, being proud of yourself and celebrating wins is conducive to better self-worth, improved drive, and higher productivity. So we want to make it a habit not just at New Year or the 15th January to celebrate yourself, but throughout the week continuously.
To master this, start by either ending or starting the day writing down or mentally checking in with one thing that you are proud of yourself for. It could be something you did in the last 24 hours, or just something in general! Train your mind to focus on what is good about you and feed that inner champ to perform again and again.