Food Allergy Counseling: New Year’s Resolutions & To Do Lists

New Year’s Resolutions, those tasks you’ve been putting off for ages but do want to do -- learning a language, or taking up an instrument, redoing your closets or updating your look , starting that diet or losing weight, getting in shape or back in shape – any of those resolutions  can be started any time. A Tuesday afternoon in May?  A Saturday night in February? Right now? Yes, yes and yes!

Although I check in with myself on daily basis about what I’m getting done and what needs to get done, hashtag entrepreneur-life, I like to take an overall stock in the fall, during the Jewish New Year. I gather my thoughts about what I want to accomplish moving forward and make my to-do and to-dream about lists. Some items are aspirational, some items are concrete. Some get done that year, some take a few years to get around to doing.

For example, the last three or four years, creating and presenting a webinar around how I, as a licensed mental health professional, work with food allergy counseling clients was on my to do. Finally, last summer, I sat down, created the content and then started booking events with continuing education providers in my state last fall. And YAY, all of 2018, I have been presenting these webinars (including one next week) and I’m booked through 2019. Woo hoo! Done!

Learning more about jazz as art form has been on my to dos for years. I see a lot of live jazz shows, maybe once or twice a month, but learning about it, formally, I haven’t gotten around to it. I was thinking of taking a class but really the Ken Burns' documentary is waiting for me. Gonna get to it this year!

I sing, semi-professionally (meaning I have been paid to perform) and I studied piano and musical theory for 8 years as a child but have forgotten most of it. Truth. My old piano teacher promises me that it’s in there somewhere, so I’ve been thinking about taking a music sight reading class for singers to enhance the performance and singing I already do. Last year, I felt too shy to go for a placement test. Yes, even I get shy. This year, they changed the structure and now no placement needed for beginners, so I signed up and paid. Done!

Dining out more; this has been on my list for several years. Many of my chef colleagues moved, restaurants have closed and/or tried and true menus have changed so radically as to be unrecognizable/unsafe. This is a biggie. This year, I need to get back out on the dining out with severe, life threatening food allergies, find new wonderful chefs, and new wonderful meals. Stay tuned.

Why am I telling you all this? Because talking publicly about your to-dos or resolutions helps to do them as you become accountable to your network of friends and family. That will help spur you on to start, work on and complete your tasks.

And if you tell everyone you’re going to do X and three years go by and you haven’t even started on X, that’s information too e.g. maybe your dreams are someone else’s, not your heart’s desire but, for example, what your parents want for you. That's okay. Have a deep think about your dreams and reconfigure them and start again.

So in short, make those "New Year's Resolutions" any time, talk about your resolutions, your to dos, your dreams with a valued confidant and see what happens, create the baby steps to get there and then get going!

Need help or support on your journey, as a licensed mental health worker, I can help. Contact me about life coaching or counseling today!