I’m going into the new year with the intention to feel more nourished. Here’s how I plan to cultivate feeling more nourished…
It’s a new year! I love this time of year and the energy that it brings. My favorite thing to do as one year comes to a close is to set an intention for the year ahead.
I spent the last few days of 2018 reflecting on the year, doing a year end review for my business and personal life, getting clear about what I want to let go of and envisioning the new year.
I wrote a blog post about my intention setting ritual here: Setting Intentions for the New Year
Photo by Deana Johnson Photography
2018 was filled with amazing and magical moments like wedding planning, traveling to the Pacific Northwest to visit my husband’s family, taking a trip to New Mexico with my family to visit my grandma and aunt, my bachelorette weekend in Kansas City, getting married in Colorado, buying our first home and more. Such beautiful memories that I’ll remember forever.
The year was also filled with intense challenges. I began teaching more yoga and group fitness classes than ever before – around 1,000 classes total. It was also my first full year without a salary from a full-time job, so I felt a lot of stress around finances.
As I reflected on the challenges from the year, I realized that I was ending 2018 feeling extremely exhausted and burned out. In fact, I had felt that way for the last few months of the year.
Teaching yoga, Pilates reformer and other group fitness classes takes a lot out of me energetically. I’m an introvert, so being around lots of people often leaves me feeling depleted. I love teaching and being able to help people feel more connected to their bodies, but teaching a lot is challenging for me. It didn’t help that my teaching schedule left me going back and forth, sometimes three or four times a day, to and from the gym where I teach most of my classes.
In addition to feeling exhausted from teaching and my schedule, the constant stress that I felt about money left me feeling depleted. My stress around finances elevated even more when my hourly rate for teaching at the gym was reduced (one of the downsides to working for a large corporation). So I began working more in order to keep my income the same. Because I felt so stressed about money, my mindset around money was really negative. Which only made things worse.
My exhaustion and chronic stress brought up a lot of self-doubt and lack of self-confidence, which held me back from taking steps forward in my health coaching business and taking care of myself in nourishing ways. I realized that I had coped throughout the year by watching a lot of TV, scrolling social media and drinking wine. And I had let go of a lot of my consistent self-care rituals. Yoga, meditation, working out, it was never consistent.
So going into 2019, I knew I needed to make some changes. I didn’t want to spend another year having my work leave me feeling tired, burned out, exhausted, stressed and depleted.
The one thing that kept coming up for me was a desire to feel more nourished – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I also felt a desire to nourish my business, career and relationships more. So my word for the year was clear…
Nourish (verb)
:to nurture
:to promote the growth of
:to support
How can I cultivate feeling more nourished this year?
Each day I repeat the mantra, “I feel nourished,” during my morning meditation and connect to what will make me feel more nourished that day.
What I do to feel more nourished is different each day, but there are definitely some bigger steps I plan to make to cultivate my desired feeling.
- Change my teaching schedule so it allows me to use my time more efficiently (no more large gaps of time between teaching classes at the gym), have space for self-care and have time to dedicate to my health coaching business and Young Living business.
- Practice yoga regularly again. For Christmas, I got gift card for a subscription to Glo, a membership site for yoga classes. I’ll also take in-person yoga classes occasionally.
- Make a conscious effort to spend less time on social media. I already put restrictions for social media use on my phone, I only use my meditation app before 7 a.m. and have been trying not to be on my phone after 8 p.m.
- Read more. I always read at least 12 books a year, but this year my goal is to read two books a month.
- Get back to my gratitude practice…especially around the abundance I already have in my life.
- Practice more self-compassion. I’m in a transitional time of my life right now – having left my career as a writer at the end of 2017 and trying to create success in my wellness business. Teaching a lot is a necessity for me right now so even though it’s challenging for me, it’s what I have to do. I’m often hard on myself for not getting more done. But looking back on 2018, I realize that, even though my wellness business didn’t grow and I didn’t accomplish what I thought I would, I worked really hard.
- Work on my mindset around money. I’ll re-read one of my favorite books about money mindset, Money Love.
Maybe more will come up for me as the year unfolds. The beautiful thing about setting intentions is that they allow for self-discovery.
What’s your word or intention for the year? Share in the comments!
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