Have you given much more thought to determining your hopes for 2018? Are your goals specific enough?

Have targets to define your goals

You can’t just write ‘get fit’ or ‘get healthy’, you have got to have a specific target, imagine that you are writing to a long-distance friend or relative about what a great year you have had.  You wouldn’t bother writing ‘I really improved my fitness’, but you could write ‘I ran my first 5k/10k/half marathon…’ or ‘I competed in my first time trials in X’.  Instead of saying you got healthy – how are you going to measure your health?  I actually don’t know the answer to this one (weight is too oversimplified)!  Maybe you can switch eventually to 50% organic or trial different diets (vegetarian/pescatarian/vegan) and write about that.  In short, have targets to define your goals.

What are you doing for yourself each day to show yourself some love?

What are you doing for yourself each day to show yourself some love?  Please keep taking pictures of these activities and sending them to me @minutesforme on instagram and facebook so that we can start inspiring each other with quick pick-me-up fixes to keep us going in our daily routines.

Should we be automating our daily routines?

To this end, I want to talk about an article I read recently discussing how we need to automate as many things in our life as possible, including the way we do essential things like get dressed, exercise and eat – in order to simplify our lives. 

Although I see the merit in automation, there is a fine line between making your life simpler and disengaging you with the present.  A more balanced rule I think, and one which is more harmonious to our enrichment, is to use automation for the basic fundamentals: washing/dishwasher/tumble dryer/essential food deliveries –  and if you can afford it  – throw in the cleaning/ironing and basic gardening too!!  As for the food, if the first time you do a delivery you put your weekly essentials in favourites, you should in future be able to do your shopping exceedingly quickly and with minimum thought.

N.B: food is a tricky one, as it can be very inspiring and creative, so a way to mix it up a bit is use a recipe book to add the ingredients for a dish you haven’t tried before.  That saves you hunting down the exotic ingredients and also means you get to try something new.

Give yourself the choice to try something new every day

When it comes to things like your commute, or your run, or the clothes that you are going to wear, these are things that really shouldn’t be automated.  You should give yourself that choice every day of trying something new.  If you take public transport to work can you get off a stop earlier and walk the last bit, or take a detour through a park or past some striking architecture.  When we had the tube strikes earlier this year, it really surprised me how many people were walking through St James’ Park to get to work (compared to a non-strike day), it is such a beautiful park that if your journey can at some point take you through there why not walk it more regularly?  Even if you walk or cycle, try a different journey.  It shakes you out of your comfort zone and changes your mindset.  Take photos, as these will force you to engage with your surroundings and stop and take notice, send to us @mintuesforme with the hashtag #newcommute.  Try to do this as often as you can!  Maybe we can start #newcommutewednesdays or something equally out there?!

This week has been incredibly enriching for me, I feel like since I made the decision to embark on this journey my thought frequencies have become much quieter, with a lot more focus on me and what I am doing.  I really hope that the same transformation is happening in your life as you think more about taking more ownership of your day to day and rewarding yourself with self love.