Thank you all so much for being here and taking the time to invest in yourself. My name is Katie Utterback! I am a Certified Life Coach and member of ICF, the International Coach Federation, which is the most recognized association for coaches worldwide. I’m also the founder and lead healer at elevated aura, an international holistic coaching firm specializing in helping you achieve goals related to relationships, health, wellness, spirituality, and self love
My motto: You deserve it because you are worth it 💋And you all must have the same motto because you took the time to be here today, so thank you for believing in yourself enough to invest in yourself.
Investing time, energy, and money in ourselves is often one of the most difficult parts of the spiritual journey for many of us. ANd when we take it, that’s when many of us start to really see abundant success and prosperity in our lives and we are able to reach resolutions and goals because we love ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, we are not going to make ourselves a priority and go to the gym. If we don’t love ourselves we are going to ignore our own wants and needs in order to cater to others, which is codependency. We may avoid knowing how much debt we’ve accumulated or we may pretend it doesn’t exist.
So when the New Year comes around a lot of us may feel peer pressure to create resolutions or goals in general. And because that very familiar question pops up, what is your New Year’s resolution? A lot of us feel pressure to just come up with a resolution, it may not be something we even care about or even be interested in, but we on some level want to fit in, we want to be socially accepted, and we want to be admired on some level too. We want others to be impressed by our goals, inspired by how strong, or smart, or healthy, or focused we are, right?
I know in the past I’ve been guilty of just creating a resolution on the spot because I had a coworker ask if I had one. So I think I said something like oh I’m working on cutting out sweets, which is sort of a goal I have right. Like if I want to prepare my body for pregnancy or if I have a health or fitness goal in mind, cutting out sweets may be part of your resolution. And fitness, health, weight goals are so pushed upon us this time of year, it’s almost weird if you don’t say that’s your resolution right?
And it burns us. Most New Year’s resolutions are broken by six weeks into the New Year – we haven’t even finished February and people are giving up. Why is that?
Well, sometimes we set goals for ourselves that we never really had any interest in. We fall into the trap of believing we SHOULD do something like read the top 100 best-fiction books of all time, when the truth of the matter is we don’t really like to read, especially fiction books. Maybe we’re more interested in taking that time to “read” to just color and listen to music or maybe take a cooking class. AND That is what our resolutions and goals should be built around. What we desire, what we crave, what we feel giddy about doing.
When we are unsuccessful at completing the thing we thought we SHOULD do, we beat ourselves up. We start to question if we’re an imposter. If we’re actually who we say we are or think we are deep down. And all that we’re really doing then is being our own bully. We created a goal for ourselves that we never liked in the first place only to fit in and be valued and appreciated and then when we didn’t do the thing we despise to impress the people we may or may not like, we don’t see this objectively. We curse ourselves our for being lazy, stupid, pathetic, dumb, you name it, and we end up feeling like we failed. When in reality, we didn’t fail. We just weren’t interested.
I want you to imagine what your life would look like, be like, smell like, feel like, taste like, if you had everything you ever wanted, needed, desired, and dreamed. What does it look like? Do you work? Do you have children? Pets? Do you travel? What is your wardrobe like? Where do you live? Who do you live with? What kind of foods do you eat? Do you worry about money? What are your hobbies?
You can create goals and resolutions based on the things that you do actually want and turn these goals into SMART goals or goals that are
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time Sensitive
Essentially when we take this extra step of creating SMART goals from what we do want out of our life, we have this advantage of creating goals around things that are authentic to us. And we additionally take that extra step of figuring out if this goal is a SHOULD or something that makes us really giddy.
So this is your reminder that the best goals for you are the ones that excite you. The ones that light a fire in your belly and make your soul sing. And the reality is that when we do what we truly want, we are vulnerable because when we are rejected as our true authentic selves, it stings. We all want to be loved and valued and seen for who we are, just as we are.
Because here’s the kicker. No matter what you do, there will always be someone to not just tell you how much you are disliked, disvalued, not worthy of love, but will make you feel underappreciated and apologetic for living. You will be disliked, disapproved of by other people regardless of what you do, so give yourself permission to make yourself happy.
Give yourself permission to focus on your own goals. Your own dreams. Your own wants, needs, and desires because at the end of the day, if you don’t stand up for you, who do you think is going to?