Your Well-Being Checkup

To kick off the year, I did a Well-Being Checkup and it turned out to be a really great practice, so I'm sharing it with you.

It's incredibly simple: Take a few minutes and reflect on the following 3 questions:

• What are some things you did in 2019 that helped you feel and be you best?
• What are some things I did that depleted your well-being?
  
• What 3 specific things are you going to do in 2020 to fuel yourself and support your well-being?

Here's a fun worksheet you can use for your Well-Being Checkup! (Here's the link to download it: My Well-Being Checkup)

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I want to help you feel your best this year!

So we're offering our popular 21-Day Happier Challenge at a super special price through January 13th just for the Happier community!

Taking this challenge will help you to:

• Take better care of yourself 
• Have less stress and more energy
• Feel joyful and content -- more often
• Practice self-compassion more often
• Have more positive relationships
• Be more fulfilled and motivated at work
• Make self-care and rest a priority

Happiness and emotional health are skills and I created this challenge to help you learn and practice them so you can feel your best.

Our 21-Day Happier Challenge normally costs $97 but to give you an extra incentive to support your well-being as you kick off the year, we’re offering it for just $35! 

You’ll have lifetime access to all the materials, including 21 short videos, PDF downloads, and more, so you can take the challenge when it’s convenient for you and as many times as you want! You can absolutely go at your own pace.

Click here to learn more and sign up -- just enter Happier2020 as your code at checkout to get the special discount.

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If you're curious, here's my Well-Being Checkup:

What are some things I did in 2019 that helped me feel and be my best?

• Created “No Calls” days and put them on my calendar, especially after a string of speaking engagements or travel (stuck to these for the most part). I’m more of an introvert than I sometimes allow myself to remember and having lower interaction days after big energy outputs really helped.
• Started packing healthy snacks for travel (veggies and hummus, grass fed beef jerky, nuts, Kind bars). Loved doing this for myself, it felt like a friend taking care of me.
• Immediately after a speaking engagement, book signing or workshop, I took 10-15 minutes to be quiet, meditate, do a little Qi Gong, just be still and silent. (I this about ½ the time and when I did, it was absolutely essential for my recovery and feeling more energetic the next day.)
• When I found myself with thoughts of scarcity or fear (e.g. what if this doesn’t work, etc.) I practiced adding a thought of gratitude for something specific right away. I set this as my intention at the beginning of the year and it was a powerful way to pair a negative habit that didn’t serve me with a positive one. I was surprised at how effective this was and I feel that I have fewer thoughts of doubt and can shift out of them quicker now.

What are some things I did that depleted my well-being? 

• Not have recovery days after speaking. We try to never have me do two speaking gigs in a row (I really don’t know how speakers who do this regularly find the energy to be at their best!), but often after a day of speaking and traveling I would dive head first into work and doing stuff for and with my family the next day. This made me more exhausted, drained energy, and I often got sick. I recognize that I still had a lot of fear around resting and doing less.
• Not slowing down work before I got exhausted. I’ve gotten a lot better at not over-working or over-efforting, but I can still push too hard and get past the point of exhaustion—and my work past that point isn’t all that great.
• Doubting whether things will work out, whether opportunities will come, whether our business will grow. While I made some progress in this area (see above), it was still a big drain on my energy and well-being. I recognize this is a long-held habit so being patient with myself as I keep working on shifting from doubt to belief.
• Not asking for help and delegating often enough. I spent most of my life as a martyr—martyr leader, martyr mom—thinking I need to do it all and actually finding satisfaction in being that way (this is hard to admit but I want to be honest about it). I’ve gotten much better, but I found many times this year when I would just push through and do stuff and get really tired and not ask for help, both with work stuff and home stuff. 

3 specific things I’m going to do in 2020 to fuel my well-being 

• Schedule recovery days and ask my family and team to help me stick to them. After I speak or do a workshop, I’m going to schedule the next day as recovery (and only make exceptions if they truly can’t be avoided, being honest about that with myself). Recovery days mean I don’t do calls, limit work that I do to reflection and creativity, and take it easy on stuff like cooking meals for fam or hanging out with them. I know I need help sticking to this so I’m going to ask my family and team to be my allies (ahem, call me out when I’m cheating myself of rest.)

• Practice less doubt and more believing by asking: “Is this helpful?” I find that I can quickly shift out of indulging thoughts of doubt, worry, or scarcity if I ask myself how these thoughts are helpful to me. The answer 99% of the time is that they aren’t and are just draining my energy, which helps me to either let them go or shift into more positive energy thoughts.

• Drink more water. Such a simple thing but I really don’t drink enough water, which gives me headaches and makes me sluggish. So going to be drinking water any chance I get and carrying my water bottle with me around the house when I’m not traveling.