If You Want To Have a Better Year, Stop Focusing on Goals And Habits FIRST And Focus on THIS Instead! 

Most people set goals and renew failed commitments, but there’s something FAR more critical to rethink if you want to have a better year.

This critical, SO OFTEN overlooked reason is WHY you may have not reached your goals or become the person you want to be yet…

Especially if you have set and failed goals and habitsso many freakin’ times that you’ve started to tell yourself they just don’t ‘work’ for you. That is how I thought for a long time, especially after learning I have ADHD.😭

But it’s not you. It’s not your neurospicy brain. And it’s not the goals and habits you’re setting.

It’s WHO you believe yourself to be.

Your IDEA about who you are: your IDENTITY.

Identity underpins ALL of your experiences in life. Friendship. Love. Partying. Travel. Money. Manifesting. Attractiveness. Wealth. Health. Impact. Everything!

And after 16 years of running my own online business with a minor obsession for self-improvement and living an exotic AF alternative lifestyle, I came up with an identity exercise that has helped me get more out of myself and my life, year after year.

So I’m going to explain why you need to rethink your identity FIRST if you want to have a better year. Then I’m going to give you the exact self-transformation exercise to follow to discover for yourself how fn POWERFUL focusing on your identity can be for helping you make MASSIVE changes for the better in your life!

Continue reading, OR if you prefer listening, click below for the podcast version below 🪄 🎧💫

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A few years back, I came across something somewhere that blew my freakin’ mind.🤯

It was reading this quote in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear:  ”It’s actually easier to step into a new identity than it is to try to create new habits and behaviors in a vacuum.”

The whole ”change your habits by changing your identity” concept was not new to me at the time. But I’d never heard anyone say it like THAT.

You know how sometimes it takes hearing something a few times until it really sinks in?? Yeah, it was that kind of ”a-ha!” moment where a rocketship of a concept finally takes TF OFF.

Although I already knew how important it was to create the identity that I desired, I suddenly realized that I had never put as much time into thinking about it as I needed to!  

So even if you’re like, ”identity, yeah, yeah”, let me drill down on why you NEED to be thinking about this on an entirely new level.

Because this is truly the kind of thought-work that can change your life.

How To Have Your Best Year Ever: Why It’s About BEING, Not DOING!

If you’re like I used to be, the big mistake you’re making when you set your goals is that you’re underestimating the importance of an energetic alignment with them.

Energetic misalignment is the gap between what we want to do and how capable we actually are of doing it.

But being capable of ANYTHING in life always starts with self-belief…

Self-belief is rooted in our subconscious beliefs about our worthiness.

Now, while there is a LOT we could unpack in re-wiring your brain to believe you are worthy, what’s important to know here is this:

WHO you think you are is based on this subconscious belief about your worthiness.

So, if you want to have a better year, start by examining how your identity reflects your self-worth.

This is how to think about identity. NOT ”I am a GenX, single and childfree dual-American and Australian business and marketing mentor” (which is me, btw!).

And it’s NOT what you do or have done that makes you who you are…

Those areidentifiers, but they are not the inner, experiencing ”you” in life.

Identity is about BEING. Not what we have or look like or what passports we hold.

And while there are MANY different ways to define ‘being,’ the one that I find most useful for making life more awesome every year is to define being as what you put up with and accept in your life.

It’s your personal standards.

How you treat yourself and how you let others treat you are all a reflection of how worthy you view yourself.

So this simplifies how to wrap your mind around the actual day-by-day steps required to make everything better, doesn’t it?

You focus on your self-worth and identity FIRST.

Changing yourself to uplevel your life is an identity project.

It’s about BEING, not DOING!

And RAISING the fn standards on everything in your life.

THAT’s how you guarantee you have a better year. You raise your standards to make damn sure it’s a better standard than all the years that came before!

And the good news is, raising your standards even the smallest bit helps make a massive shift. James Clear often says, even 1% better helps a LOT.

Here’s How A Stronger Identity Helps You Enjoy Life SO Much More!

Your life feels off to you because your thinking is ass-backwards.

You think, like I used to, that you have to DO something in order to HAVE something to BE someone, right?

But the magic of self-transformation is in BEING first in order to HAVE the energetic alignment required to HAVE what you want.

Here’s a simple explanation of why:

Say you want to grow your social network and have heaps more fun social experiences this year. You first need to feel worthy of friendship, worthy of attention, of making yourself seen and heard, to put your neck out and meet people.

Then, when you feel worthy of friendship and love and attention, it builds a stronger identity.

You start believing at a subconscious level, ”I am someone who is fun, and I am a great friend.”

The identity and self-belief BEING work created the energy to DO all the things you needed to in order to HAVE the social life you want.

Any habit that you want to commit to becomes a million times easier when you have a strong identity.

It’s a stack: self-worth is the land and concrete, identity is the house, and habits are all the things that can happen because of the first two things.

Stronger foundation = bigger house, more rooms, stairways, windows, etc = more possibilities in all the rooms for fun experiences and habits.

So, for example, when women want to lose weight, they’ll often think, ”Ok, I have to DO all these healthy habits to BE a healthy person, and then I can HAVE a thinner body.” And we think this way because society has brainwashed us that thinner = more worthy.

But that’s not how transformation works.

You start not by meal prepping but by reminding yourself that you are worthy just as you are right NOW.

That sense of being already worthy becomes the identity of ”someone who eats whole foods and does weights every day.”

And then, as that person, choosing the grilled fish and veggies instead of the bacon-cheese hamburger and fries is just a thing you do. There’s less willpower involved. If at all! It’s just YOU. You don’t eat garbage.

This is the secret to badassery: rock-solid self-worth > strong identity > natural and effortless habits.

It’s also the core foundation of manifesting whatever you want in life.

Here’s another example for you around romance.

Once you believe that you are worthy, you believe you are worthy of nice things in life and that you deserve to be treated well. So your identity may be, ”someone who is a glamourpuss who deserves nice things.”

And BEING that person means that when you have a date with a guy who shows up half an hour late without ever texting you, and he is dressed like a hobo and smells like ass, you are in the HABIT of calling it out, saying, ”hard no, we’re not a good fit, good-bye”, walking out, and not apologizing.

It’s who you are. Your standard of being in the world requires that you be treated better than that.

Now, let me show you a really fun way to work on this by sharing exactly how I started doing it!

Here’s a Super Fun Exercise to Instantly Shift How You See Yourself NOW

Now, let me introduce you to my ”3-selves” timeline method to work on strengthening your identity NOW. I use this same exercise at least once a month to work on a specific area of my life I want to improve.

Step 1: Describe PAST-YOU

First, dive into who you used to be, like many years ago…

Describe her life and habits, using third-person narrative. 

It’s important to describe her in detail because you need to understand how your values may have changed.

Values are what drive our motivation and shape our lifestyle choices.

They are the core of what’s most important to us. What used to be important to you is what created the habits you have now, so you need to be able to identify them: Is it family? Money? Fun? Helping people? Your faith?

I used Chat GPT to give me a long list of values so I could identify ones that used to mean a lot to me, but aren’t as important now.

Step 2. Describe YESTERDAY-YOU

After you’ve written a succinct little summary of Past-You, now bring into focus Yesterday-You, which is closer to your current self. Think of who you were in just this past year.

Yesterday -You’s values have changed a lot since Past-You, but she’s still donkey-packing those old-you bad habits you want to kick to the curb now.

I found it helpful to bring into focus this second version of the me-I-want-to-change because she’s the bridge between the past and future:

Any future changes I want to make kind of ride on how she’s feeling about herself and how she’s handling that bridge. 

This part was powerful AF for me. 

I dredged up quite a lot of crusty, hidden crap, like, ”Most of the time, she feels frustrated with how slow progress is taking, and so she sabotages that progress and then projects her disappointment with herself onto her partner.”  WHOE. 🤯

Again, it’s important to write this in third-person because creating that space between yourself and this ‘you’ that you want to change helps you to withhold judgment. Stay aloof.

Just describe things as factually as possible. It’s more revealing that way.

Step 3. Describe EMPRESS-YOU

Now for the fun part! 😉

Describe who you want to BECOME. ”As if” she has already achieved the things you want to achieve to have a better year. Describe her by what bridges she crossed: emotionally, tangibly, and philosophically or spiritually. 

I like calling the future version of me ”Empress-Me” because it sounds like ”impress me” which is what I want to do to myself. I want to IMPRESS myself and make myself proud.

(And, of course, because of the obvious ”online empire” reference! 👑)

What I discovered in describing this version was that I was giving myself the energetic playbook for how to handle Yesterday-Me’s problems.

So this ”3-selves” timeline exercise gives you a kind of personal Standards Guide.

The guide that you need to ensure you have a better year.

Repeat this exercise every time life starts to feel off for you.

It will remind you of WHO you are becoming so that you can stay in energetic alignment with that identity.

Impatient? Empress-Me says calm TF down and enjoy the ride. All you have to do is KEEP GOING.

Frustrated? Empress-Me says that’s part of the process. It’s not meant to be easy. 

Anxious? Empress-Me says stop thinking so much about the future and what you haven’t achieved yet, and practice more gratitude. Stay in the present. Whatever it is you want to feel in the future, you can absolutely choose to feel right now. 

And more than anything else, what I dredged up is that the main thing Empress-Me has that Yesterday-Me does not is TRUST.

Self-trust. Trust in the process. Trust in the universe, giving me exactly what I need to grow, even if that’s difficult, and trust that I am on the right path. 

One guaranteed way to have a better year: TRUST YOURSELF MORE!

And I think that is what aspiring entrepreneurs need most: self-trust! 🪄🦢 

You can take all the business and marketing courses that ever came into existence, but without self-trust, NONE of them are going to help you get to where you want to go. 

So try this Identity-strengthening exercise and see what comes up for yourself.

I know for me this year, I will be reminding myself of my Empress-Me identity and her way of being and thinking.

That way, the good habits will come naturally and easily! 

So I hope that you found this helpful and that it helps you have one kickass year – even despite all the bullshit going on in the world!

Remember…

You are still the narrator of your own world.

So tell the story that you want to hear. And that you need to hear to do the things you want to do.

Ready to have a better year and transform your life?

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