Everywhere you look you will find people that have no compunction about attending to themselves. They pick up their book and read when the fancy takes them. They indulge in their hobbies. They spend time on the things they are interested in. They seem acutely in tune with their own needs for nurture and growth of the inner self.  Yet others of us fail pitifully to look after our own mental, physical and emotional wellbeing, even when all the signs are telling us otherwise.

One of the first things I ask my clients to commit to is an hour a day to work on their hypnotherapy goals. It is no accident that those who make this important commitment to themselves reap the greatest rewards.

Yet so many of us put ourselves way down our priority list. We want to change, indeed we make New Year’s resolutions to improve and enrich our lives, but then resolutely allow ourselves no time to do it. How often have you set yourself a goal but then found work getting in the way, kids getting in the way, family life taking over, chores, housework, other people’s needs and wants, your own impossibly high (and unnecessary) standards – all getting in the way?

New Year is a time to get your priorities clear, and decide what you really want to do and achieve. What do you want to change in 2016? How do you want to change? And when you’ve decided, commit now to doing something every day that will help you move closer to your goal. 

Perhaps you want to give up smoking? Get out of that dead end job? Relax more? Meet someone new? Well let me ask; what have you done since waking up this morning to move yourself closer to that deeply worthwhile goal? Because every day counts; you don’t get a second crack at today. There’s no ‘BBC day-player’, no ‘catch-up’, no ‘pause life because I’m busy right now’ button. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Perhaps you want to reduce your weight by two or three stones? Or improve your stamina? Perhaps you want to learn a foreign language? If your goal is big, like these, then it can be overwhelming to think about it in the context of a whole year. Instead why not break the year down into blocks of 24 hours and focus on what you are going to do today to move closer to that goal? Take two thirty minute walks a day? Start and finish the day with ten press-ups? Learn five new phrases a day before you go to sleep? You get the idea…

Or is that too ambitious? How much time are you prepared to set aside for your goal? How important is it to improve your life? Or, put another way, how important are YOU on a scale of 1-10? You have 24 whole hours every single day. How much of that time do you think you are worthy of? Because, quite frankly, if you can’t even find sixty minutes in a whole day, to look after, nourish, care for and dedicate to the loveliness of you, then you seriously need your head examining. You are a unique and beautiful creation. There is no-one else on this planet exactly the same as you. No, not even you monozygotic twins are 100% identical. So celebrate your uniqueness. Celebrate you. Look after yourself. Exercise a little ‘healthy selfishness’ for an hour a day. Resolve to give yourself a minimum of sixty minutes each day to work on YOU throughout January and see how much better you feel.

And remember, each day is a gift; an opportunity to start afresh, to work at your goals. So honour the beautiful creation that you are, and put yourself first for one glorious hour a day. I look forward to hearing how 2016 goes for you, you crazy, wonderful people!