5 Great plans for 2015

We always start our new year’s full of plans, dreams and aspirations.

2014 for so many was a year of immense challenges and also much hardship. Trials, tribulations, and some hard life lessons.  I, like so many of us, am speaking from experience.

So what can we do, now, in this moment, to begin to change our courses for 2015? To dust ourselves off and carry onwards? I have 5 tips for you

Hold a post-mortem – identify what didn’t work in 2014 – make changes, eliminate but do not repeat them! How did your life shine? What made it shine? What is still holding you back? Have your beliefs, habits and ways of accomplishing tasks – professional and household, kept up with the times? Are you efficient? With a brutally honest swot assessment of your life you can now guide the implementation of any improvements that need to occur within your life.

Stand out – find your niche and distinguish your individualism! 2015 is a year to do things differently. Get out of your rut, leave your comfort zone, and innovate. This year is about new ideas, new ways of doing things and new processes. Stretch your wings and stretch your abilities. Explore greatness.

To take care of yourself, your family, your home, your business, you need to take care of yourself. Spend time focussing on your personal goals. Eat well. Exercise. Get enough sleep, have alone time for meditation, reflection, or simply solitary indulgence. You deserve this and in fact your body demands this if you want it to perform at its peak!

Be positive and be present. How many times do you drive to work, to drop the kids at school, to visit your boyfriend or girlfriend, and only once you reach your destination do you realise that you have no recollection of how you got there! This is because we have trained our minds to focus on our destination, not on how we get there. While focussing on where you want to end up in life is vital, what you do along the way is even more important. We are so quick to focus on the negative. Let’s be mindful, be positive and let’s make the leap to positivity!

Back to school

And 2015 is already in full swing. Hard to believe that just a month ago we were all in the hype of the Christmas bug, frantically buying last minute groceries and presents, and now all mommies and daddies are back behind their desks and our little darlings are back in their cells. I mean, back at school. New teachers, new timetables, new extra murals, new books, and new challenges. Both for them and for us, the parents. Covering books as though your very life depended on it, feverishly sticking yourself to the sticky plastic, and ruing the day you ever chose to be the perfect parent.  Stewing over the lunch menu. Sandwiches piled high with cucumber, cheese, ham. (brown bread naturally). Lunch boxes stuffed with carrot sticks and celery.  Water by the bottle. Gallon bottle.  Perfect haircuts. No glimpse of gel, hair dye or nailpolish. Gleaming new school shoes which in turn give gleaming blisters.  School dresses way too long for their wearers, school shorts hanging nearly below the knees, too-long school socks. And an all-over feeling of hope. Hope that the teacher will like your darling. Hope that your darling won’t bite another child in full site of anybody. Hope that you will continue being mom of the year and supplying balanced healthy lunches and not, out of pure desperation, shoving some pizza slices and left-over bread into an old margarine tub with a bottle of Coke. Hope that you will stick to your own diet, and manage to at least keep going to the gym until the end of February. Hope that demerits will be curbed and detention will be a thing of 2014. Hope that petrol prices will plummet. Hope that the cost of living will somehow decrease by 20%. In general, hope that this year will be better than the last. That your resolutions will be kept. That you and your beautiful family and friends will be healthy, safe and prosperous in the months to come. And we wish you the same. From our family to yours, Happy Back to School!