'new year, new me'

We’re just over a week into the new year and how many new gym memberships do you think have been sold worldwide this month so far?

January is the month when gym memberships peak. And yet within 3 months, a whopping 90% of those new members, stop going to the gym.

It’s the most profitable time for many gyms and although some of the new members will cancel their membership within those 3 months when they stop attending, many will just keep their membership running out of their bank account, even though they themselves have stopped running on the treadmill.

Indeed, one luxury gym, more interested in its members than its bottom line, recognised this surge in new, temporary members and chose to actually ban new members joining in January because they want their members to be happy, to be committed, to be engaged, and to see results.

It doesn’t have to be the sudden desire to join a gym. You may have made other resolutions designed to change your life this year.

Perhaps you want to reduce your environmental footprint and have decided to become vegetarian or stop buying products that come wrapped in plastic.

Perhaps you feel it’s time you took better care of yourself so you’ve decided to stop eating any and all processed and junk food or you’ve planned to go for an hour’s walk each day.

Whatever the idea, if you’ve created resolutions and promises along the lines of ‘new year. new me’, statistics show that 43% of people will fail to carry them through. Indeed, one out of every four people (that’s 25%) don’t even make it past the first week of January and a measly one in nine see their resolutions through to completion.

Perhaps you’re reading this today, in the middle of the second week of January, and you’re feeling pretty crumby because you’re one of those four who wasn’t able to stick to your resolution beyond the first week.

Well, I’m here to say, don’t beat yourself up. Stop being so hard on yourself.

Whilst it’s great to want to change, to have the desire to improve, to aspire to being a better version of you, putting all that pressure and focus on one specific day of the year being THE day to begin again, well, it’s just never going to work.

Why should January 1st be so much more special than February 1st or June 15th or October 22nd? If you take the pressure off, it’s just another day.

It’s a bit similar to the concept of Spring cleaning where the kitchen gets a full-on clean, your wardrobe is emptied and all your clothes disappear into bags and are distributed around the second-hand shops. And then 3 months down the line you’re heading out to meet friends and there’s a top you’re looking for but can’t find, only to remember that, on a whim, you tossed it into the bag going to the charity shop a while ago because, well, you hadn’t had the occasion to wear it for a while.

When we put so much pressure and focus on a specific date or specific event, we tend to feel regret about some of our actions (or inactions) a little while after.

As people, we have the tendency to hold onto things beyond their use by date or useful date.

And that can impact us on any and every level: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, energetic.

For many years after I left the corporate world, I kept many of my work clothes. Whilst I never wanted to go back to that world, a world where I experienced so much bullying, a world that led to a serious decline in my health, a world where I was deeply unhappy, I held onto the clothes I only wore in my corporate job just incase circumstances forced we to return. Just incase…

It's the same with people, with experiences, with situations.

You get into a rut, you stay attached, even if it’s just energetically, even when those attachments are not serving you. Indeed, remaining attached, even just energetically and unconsciously, could actually (and will most likely) be pulling your vibe down lower than it should and could be.

And then one specific event or day, it could be the onset of Spring or, as has recently been the case, the arrival of the new year, and it’s like a shockwave has traveled through your body, stunning you awake. Time to release things that you don’t need or aren’t serving you, time to change bad habits and become a better version.

Sometimes that can lead to success. Sometimes we do need a firecracker up our proverbial to cause us to take action. But more often than not, the leap from where we are today to where we want to be tomorrow (or by the end of the year) is simply too huge for us to handle.

And so, before long, we fall short. We return to old ways.

The secret isn’t focusing on a single day or waiting for a specific event to come around before you make the changes you’d like to see in your life. It’s something that should become part of your routine, something you act on daily.

Only when you choose to do things on a regular basis, only when you take one step and one day at a time, can you create a habit that feels natural and part of your daily life. And only when it’s part of your daily life will you be able to look back in 6 months’ time and see how much your changed, grown, developed. Only when it’s part of your daily life will you be able to look back in 12 months’ time and understand how much higher your vibration is because you cut cords with that person who hurt you, when they hurt you rather than carrying the heaviest of that experience around with you.

Changing who we are is a gradual and perpetual part of living. If we’re not changing, we’re not living. However, change is also a conscious thing so if we are not making adjustments on a conscious level, the change we wish to celebrate in 6 months, in a year will simply not happen.

So how do you change? Indeed, as I asked the angels and our guides, what do I need to know about releasing that which no longer serves me? Because in order to change you need to know what to change, what to release.

Viv xx