Mind-Body Goals in 2022
Happy New Year, my friends.
One of the things that I hope to bring you, my loyal readers, is more value. My hope is to offer you some effective tools to make progress just by reading the weekly blog. So, I thought we would start off right away.
Mind-Body Goals. That’s what we are talking about today. I am going to go one step further and say that today we are going to create 1 mental, 1 physical, and 1 emotional goal for 2022.
In order to do this, please follow along with this email and go through the steps in order. I recommend grabbing a pen and paper and writing down your observations as you go.
Step 1. Close your eyes and visualize your ideal state of health and well-being. Where are you? What are you wearing? What hairstyle are you wearing? What time of day is it? What are you doing? How are you feeling? Be as specific as possible and record it on your paper.
Step 2. Close your eyes and again visualize yourself in your ideal state of health and well-being. This time we are focusing on our physical self. When you think of your physical health, is there anything that you are particularly concerned with? Perhaps you were just notified that you have high cholesterol or high fasting blood sugars, or maybe you have been feeling more fatigue. Maybe, you are feeling strong on your runs, but you have been skimping on your weight training. Or - maybe it is time to schedule your mammogram, colonoscopy, yearly check-up, or wellness visit.
What is one area that you want to focus on and set a small goal to improve? Let’s say you have had trending fasting blood sugars and you want to educate yourself on the best strategy to improve this. Notice I didn’t say that you have to fix your blood sugars today, we are just planning to educate ourselves on how to do this. Small, Realistic, Goals that we can set today.
Now, you are certainly allowed to have more than 1 physical goal, but I am a big fan of picking 1 and only 1… making progress on it… and then moving on to another. On your sheet of paper, write the one physical area of improvement and the first step you will take toward improving it.
Example:
Area of Improvement: LDL Cholesterol
First Step: Research best lifestyle modifications to improve this value
Step 3. Close your eyes and again visualize yourself in your ideal state of health and well-being. This time, we are focusing on our mental health. Can you identify any repetitive, intrusive thoughts that you have been managing recently? Thoughts that would drive you away from your ideal state of health? Perhaps you are experiencing a lot of “should” statements. “I should have done this… I should not have done that.” See if you can think of anything that has been on your mind and doesn’t make you feel very good.
Once you identify the thought, I want you to analyze it. Write your thought on your paper and then below the thought, start to list all of the evidence that would disprove it. Be as specific as you can. I want to show you that it is very easy to slip into the automatic negative thought pattern, but with just a little bit of work, we can also create thoughts that will serve us much better.
After you begin to disprove your thought with your evidence that goes against it, you may feel a bit lighter.
Next step is deciding what you want to believe instead. This is creating an intentional thought. This is powerful because none of us know the future. Our automatic negative thought and our new intentional thought have the same chance of being accurate. Or both of them could be wrong, quite honestly. The point is - which do we choose to believe? Once you have that thought… then a mental goal can be to go through this process again and again so that you can continue making more and more intentional thoughts.
Step 4. Close your eyes and again visualize yourself in your ideal state of health and well-being. This time we are focusing on our emotional health. When you visualize yourself, how do you feel? Content? Calm? Relaxed? Think about the feeling first, then write it on your paper. In order to feel a certain way, you have to think a certain way. Underneath the feeling on your paper, list all of the thoughts that make you feel that way.
Here is an example. If when I close my eyes, I visualize myself as content. Then, I would write CONTENT on my paper. Next, I would generate all of the thoughts that make me feel content. Here are a few: I am exactly where I need to be. I trust myself to make good decisions. I am a good friend. I appreciate my good health. My size does not define me.
You get the idea? The idea is that with your emotional 2022 goal, you do have a say in how you feel. How can you think of more thoughts that help you create the feeling that you want?
You can use this exercise again and again over the course of the year. Think of what you can achieve in mind, body, and emotions over the course of the year?!
Don’t want to do this work alone? Maybe you are looking for a community of women physicians who are committed to their mental, physical, and emotional self-care? We hang out in G.O.A.L.S. Society!! Our FREE 30-Day is going away soon… and we have so much amazing content this January. You can check out our community HERE.
