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New Year, New You! Revving Up Your Resolutions

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018

New Year New YouIt’s the New Year. A time to celebrate. A time to visualize our future. A time to wish about our hopes and dreams. A time to sow the seeds of intention and resolve to use this new year as a chance to wipe the slate clean, turn to the next chapter of our life, grow and improve, and be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. 

Setting resolutions at the New Year is an old tradition for people in the Western hemisphere.  Resolutions are goals, intentions and new habits that we want to integrate to help us have a happy, healthy and prosperous life moving forward. Turning the calendar page and leaping forward into the New Year is the perfect time to reflect on the past and chart our course for the future. 

How many times have you heard yourself saying, “I am going to lose 10 lbs. this year” or “I’m going to exercise more this year.”  It’s almost as if our brains are hardwired to set lofty goals for ourselves during this time of winter hibernation.   

Armed with new goals on index cards or pasted to our bathroom mirror, we start off strong, determined that THIS time it will be different. We will nail our resolutions. And then about two weeks into our new habit we create a little speed bump: We oversleep and are running late, preventing us from eating breakfast; or our late afternoon work meeting lasted really late, stopping us from going to the gym. Simply put, life happens! And even the best of our intentions get derailed.  

Making resolutions at the beginning of a new year is a really good thing to do. Whats the magic bullet to keep your resolutions revved up and moving forward? I have a few suggestions: 

  1.  Limit the number of New Years resolutions to only one.  In this highly distracted, tech-driven and modern time it is really hard to focus and adding a bunch of goals will only set you up for failure. Instead, choose one area of your life that is your priority for the upcoming year and set one intention for making a solid and successful change.

  2. Give yourself a gold star. Do you remember how delicious it felt to receive a little gold star from your first grade teacher as a reward for doing something well? The feel of the gold foil and smell of the glue on the back of the star are etched into our memories forever and conjure up amazing feelings of success. Use this brain-based memory to reward yourself for executing your resolution every day. Resolutions are new habits and research tells us that it takes over 30 days of doing the same thing to create a new habit. Seeing your stickers or gold stars on a calendar as a measure of your progress will keep you focused and motivated.
  3. Get a support buddyScientists have discovered that we are much more likely to be successful with new habits when we have the support of others. Sharing your intentions with an accountability friend who will hold your feet to the fire or a group of people who can cheer you on across the finish line, exponentially increases your chances of keeping your resolutions and establishing new habits in your life.

With these simple tips, setting and keeping your new year’s resolutions will help you Lead Well, Live Well and Do Well on your path of success.   

© Rita Perea, 2018.  All rights reserved.  

Where does the time go?

Wednesday, November 29th, 2017

Do you ever end the work day and, in a befuddled sort of way, ask yourself where your time went? If your answer is yes, you are not alone. One of the biggest challenges to creating wellbeing in our work and in our lives is our habit of letting time slip away without really knowing where it is being spent. The old saying is true: “The more you do of what you are doing, the more you’ll get of what you are getting”.

Think about this: everything you do, all day long, either will help you move toward your goal or will hinder you from reaching your goal. If you want better results, you’ve got to change the way you are using your time. The way to move closer to balancing work and life is to analyze your choices about what you are using your time for.

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Pushing Past Procrastination

Thursday, June 30th, 2016
procrastination office worker imageRita Perea is president and CEO of Rita Perea Leadership Coaching and Consulting, specializing in working with senior leaders to successfully engage employees, lead teams, manage change and balance work and life.

Being at the top of your game day after day, and living your life to its fullest, requires the development of successful time mastery habits. “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” carries the classic wisdom from a very accomplished Benjamin Franklin.

As an executive coach and a certified work-life balance specialist, I have had many clients who express a feeling of being overwhelmed with “too much to do and not enough time to do it.”  This feeling of not knowing where to begin can lead to inertia, being weighed down and unable to move. They find themselves in a full-blown habit of procrastination – putting things off until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day.

At one time or another we have all fallen prey to the self-sabotaging behavior of putting important tasks aside until “some other time”.   Unfortunately for some who are stuck in the avoidance cycle, another time never magically appears.  This is the opposite of the Nike tag line “Just Do It”.  In our culture winners achieve results and losers just do nothing.  To be self-actualized at work and in our personal lives, we need to overcome the behaviors that shoot us in the foot, often making us feel badly about ourselves.

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