Merry Christmas!

With only six days to go until the end of the year, its worth taking time to reflect on the past 12 months but also to look forward to 2018 and all the possibilities that are open for you. You’ve made it to the end of another year, collected many memories and overcome many obstacles, no matter how minor, along the way. It’s time to celebrate all you’ve achieved.

Relax, have that glass of prosecco and enjoy the fruits of your labour. Have an amazing Christmas and a New Year without a shred of worry, for now, it’s time to enjoy yourself. You can keep enjoying yourself all throughout the next year too, the celebration doesn’t have to end in January. You can move into the New Year with stride, keep the momentum going and have another year filled with success.

Most of us make resolutions only to fall of the wagon 3/4 way through January and then beat ourselves up for not having more willpower. Rather than making resolutions this time around, why not make a single promise to yourself to recognise your strengths and capabilities and work on finding ways to use them throughout the coming year. Set yourself goals for the year that are within or just above your capabilities. To achieve them, identify ways you can increase your chances for success. Allocate time to achieving your goals and be realistic about how much time will be needed. Many mums underestimate the time needed to complete even the most basic tasks once you have to account for a family. Some of us struggle to get used to achieving things at a slower pace than we always did but we're not in a race with anyone. It's far better to take time to get to where we want to than not to get there at all.

Taking our time and being realistic about what we can achieve is system that we should stick to throughout the year and the rest of our lives and works so much better than putting sporadic spurts of effort into our goals. Imagine you wanted to write your first book. It could be an autobiography or the novel you've always wanted to. You believe it’s within your capabilities to have the first draft written by Summer and you find that you work best and are most creative in the morning after dropping the kids off at school.

To get the book written with your new system of allocating enough time to play to your strengths and capabilities you may plan to write at least 500 words every morning, when you’re at your best. You'd be relaxed and systemised in working towards your goal. In the same vein you may not get that book written if you wrote a few thousand words every now and at times when you aren’t your most creative.

Once you understand your strengths, the aim is to focus on improving them. It’s far more fulfilling, and less frustrating, to improve what you’re already good at rather than spending energy on working on your weaknesses. Using the same energy would you can go from good to great rather than bad to average. This can be applied to our work or business as well as our personal lives.

If you were excellent and closing sales over phone but awful at doing it through email, it would be far better for your business to focus on getting leads over the phone rather than struggling with sales emails. If you focused on getting better at phone sales, your skills would become world class and your sales would reflect that whereas putting the same energy into getting better at emails it would take far longer to get to an acceptable level and your sales results wouldn't be as good as you know they could be.

With most things in life regular commitment and working on what you’re good at gets the best results. That will be the secret behind your success in 2018. Keep the fire burning throughout the year with this knowledge and you’ll spend longer celebrating the year and less time worrying about what you haven't achieved. Set goals and plan things that you know take into account your strengths and are within your capabilities and you’ll constantly be winning throughout the year.

Consistent wins will keep you motivated throughout the year. Not just in January. Let me know how you get on.

Start your journey today – achieve confidence, balance and clarity for an easier, happier life!

Empowering Mums is on a mission to empower a million mums and mumpreneurs just like you with greater confidence, balance and clarity to activate your infinite capabilities within! Enabling you to enjoy an easier, happier life alongside running a highly successful business. Aligned with enjoying time out for an essential self-care routine that fulfils your own needs and delight in quality time spent with your children being the mum you really want to be!

For further support please contact Empowering Mums today on 01606 334 015, alternatively visit our website at www.empoweringmums.com for more information.