Dear friends and supporters,
Almost a week of the New Year has passed, how are all of you feeling? Excited? Inspired? Motivated? Or are you still recovering from New Year's Eve? ;)
This is my first post of the year so I want to start positively strong!
First of all, I would like to thank you for supporting me throughout last year. From a career perspective, it has not been the easiest year for me given that I became a mother to a cheeky baby boy last February.
It took me longer than I expected to get back into coaching and blogging again. At one point, I was even stressing myself out that I should be doing more for my work. In the end, I learned to let go of silly expectations and go with the flow.
I am immensely grateful that I am able to do what I love with the support of my husband. He takes care of our baby while I do my coaching sessions, as we cannot afford to send him to daycare at the moment.
Secondly, I would like to reflect on what went well for me last year. Below is my gratitude list, inspired by my beautiful soul sister, Danielle. She shared her gratitude list on her Facebook so I decided to do the same in this post.
1. Becoming a mother- I appreciate my parents a lot more and learn to empathize with them. Especially for my mother whom I thought all my life was the worse parent but thinking back, she and my dad gave me a great foundation. Even if I do not agree with all the things she did to and for us as children.
2. Breastfeeding- Despite the initial challenges, with the support of my husband, I stuck through exclusively breastfeeding my son. Not only is he getting the best nutrition, I get to spend time bonding with him plus I lost my pregnancy weight quickly.
3. Getting back in shape- I was lucky enough to spend some time in Ibiza after my pregnancy to focus on my health. I was eating healthy, doing Hypopressive exercises twice a week and having full body massages once a week.
4. Travelling- We have not stopped traveling even with our baby, he has been to Germany, Ibiza, Singapore and Amsterdam.
5. Making new connections- Since becoming a mother, I forced myself to meet other mothers with young children, going on play dates and a local mama meeting every 2 weeks. Even though I am not particularly close to any of the mothers, I feel more connected to my village. It feels nice to bump into my mama friends when I'm out.
6. Reconnecting with family- I want my son to know that he has extended family so I reached out to my maternal side of the family. When we were in Singapore last year, I caught up with my aunties and cousin. I am happy that they got to meet my husband and son.
7. Discovering my village- Having to be more home bound with my son means that I am more local, I discovered new places and have a greater appreciation of my canton.
8. Learning German- I am finally taking lessons at the local community centre and understand more German since living in the German-speaking part of Switzerland in the last 4 years. Also, I made some new friends from class! :)
9. Health coaching- Surprisingly, I ended last year with 3 new clients! So despite all my worry of not doing enough to build my practice, things continue to work out when I least expected it to.
10. Practicing mindfulness- Even though I have not been meditating consistently, I spend the time that I have breastfeeding my son to concentrate on being present and taking deep breathes. Whenever I take walks with my son, I remind myself to stop looking at my phone and concentrate on the surrounding nature.
Thirdly, I ended the last days of 2016 with a goal-setting day with my husband. We both sat down one day after dinner and concentrated on creating a mind map of what we want to achieve in each areas of our lives.
Then we shared our goals with each other. I think it was helpful for us to know what we each of us wants and now we can support each other to reach our goals. Here is my mind map for 2017 below:
Lastly, I would encourage you to take a moment to reflect what went well for you last year. Then take some time and think about which areas of your life that you would like to see progress.
Take out a large piece of paper (or you can stick 2 A4 size paper together) and create a mind map just like the one I have done. Make yourself a cup of hot tea, turn on some nice music and spend some time on it. Get creative- use different colours, doodle or paint if you like. Stick it up somewhere where you can refer to it all the time throughout 2017.
The same friend Danielle inspired this mind map. She conducted a NLP (Neuro Linguistic Program) workshop that I was fortunate to attend on a beach in Thailand a few years ago. Thank you! :)
I hope you continue to manifest your dreams, keep raising your standards this year.
P/S: If you are looking to change a habit for your health, I would like to invite you to a free consultation with me.
Big Love,
Marisa