Hi everyone! Happy Friday! Wow…it’s been over a month since I wrote a post, sorry about that…time flies when you’re to do list keeps growing and you’re missing deadlines left and right. HA. Just kidding…sort of…
Enough of that though because this entire post is intended to make you all realize you’re doing better than you think you are and to not be so hard on yourselves and I’m going to try to listen to my own advice too. So let’s get into it.
A few days ago I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts by Dr. Katrina Ubell called “Weight Loss for Busy Physicians” (no, I am not a physician, but I am fairly busy and I do want to lose weight, so I listen). She doesn’t only talk about weight loss though, she gives great advice on ways to reshape your thoughts and just really sheds light on how our thoughts affect our actions and outcomes. I love it! Highly recommend it.
Anyway, in this particular one I just listened to, she advised the listener to write a letter to themselves from their future self, a “you who has achieved the goals you were setting out to achieve”. I know, it sounds a little silly, but you don’t have to even actually write it like a letter if you don’t want to. The key piece of it is that you are supposed to be answering 3 questions that you are asking your future self.
What should you stop doing?
What should you start doing?
What should you keep doing?
As a whole, these three questions can really help you to hone in on action you need to take to achieve your goals, so I recommend answering all 3. Number 3 though is the real money-maker in terms of (hopefully) making yourself feel a little better in terms of your current situation.
When I started writing mine out (again, I didn’t even write a letter or pretend I was talking to myself or anything weird, I just literally wrote out #1-3 and then started filling it in) I expected that #1 and #2 would dominate the page and I wouldn’t have anything to write for #3. But pretty quickly I actually found a few things I wrote down for #3 that I felt were things I currently am doing and definitely want to keep doing and that are good for me overall. It actually felt great! I went from feeling pretty down on myself about not getting a lot done lately to feeling much better overall.
I feel like we all (or at least I do) typically have a tendency to focus too much on the negatives or things we wish we could improve upon and we don’t spend nearly enough time celebrating our wins. Taking a moment to give yourself a little bit of credit for things you’ve already accomplished or positive habits you’ve been able to create can really help to motivate you to create even more positivity in your life. The good things are there if you take the time to recognize them.
So, I’ll keep this short and sweet for today. If you’re feeling like maybe you haven’t been killing it lately, go ahead and answer these three questions for yourself and really focus on #3, I bet you’ll realize you are already doing so much more than you’ve been giving yourself credit for.
Have a great day! :)