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The podcast discusses why New Year's resolutions may not be effective and suggests alternative approaches, such as choosing a word of the year. Only 9% of Americans actually complete their resolutions. The hosts encourage reflection on the previous year, including lessons learned, challenges faced, and successes achieved. They recommend selecting a word that resonates with empowerment, growth, resilience, and personal relevance. They also provide suggestions for incorporating the word into daily life, such as journaling, creating visual reminders, and using affirmations. Welcome, welcome, welcome ladies to Queens Unburdened, a mental health perspective for women of color. Today, I am here, Crystal Turner. Hello, I'm Dr. Kimiko, psychiatric nurse practitioner. We are coming on for the month of January, are talking about why resolutions may not be the best way to start your year. We're not trying to bust anyone's bubble, but we want to talk about this because there are statistics that talk about how New Year's resolutions stand out. The research has suggested that only 9 percent of Americans that make resolutions actually complete them. In fact, research goes on to show that it's only 23 percent of people who, well, no, not only, but it is 23 percent of people who quit their resolutions before the end of the week, and 43 percent of people quit their resolution before the end of January. We want to talk about this so that we can figure out ways to continue what it is we have the desire to achieve going into the year, then we can close out the year and say, I did that. Let's explore other options for setting goals for ourselves. Dr. Kimiko, can you take us into that? Absolutely. Thank you, Crystal. Interestingly, in our group, Queens Unburdened and Mental Health Perspective for Women of Color, we put out a poll and I just wanted to know how many people had resolutions, how many people used a word to guide their year, and how many people just set goals. Ironically, very few people set resolutions, which didn't really surprise me a lot, but I am not one to set resolutions. One thing that I was telling Crystal is that I often will pick a single word to guide my year. The concept of a word for the year helps us to focus more on our guided decisions, our behaviors, and growth throughout the year. We're going to talk a little bit more about how to come up with your word of the year. Crystal is going to start by telling us where to start with that. Yes. I think the best way for us to do that is reflect on the year that just passed. How do you feel about this past year? Think about how you went into that year, what were you studying for yourself, and how did that end? Really thinking about that. Then also thinking about what lessons you've learned in the year. What lessons have you learned? Because that's important for us to have an awareness of that, because we take that with us. We want to take the lessons with us. But also what challenges were faced? These are parts of ourselves that we can say maybe they're a bit of where we have to put a bit more work in, or just to be aware of maybe a weakness that we have. What challenges did you face? What successes did you actually achieve? We end thinking about the successes because we want to say, what is it that works for us that we can also take into this new year? Those are your strengths. How can these reflections inform your choices on a word that you want to choose for this coming year? Absolutely. A lot of times we get bogged down on, oh my goodness, what words should I use? But the word can be something that's aspirational, as Crystal mentioned, reflective. Does it, it could potentially help with a specific area of growth or challenge that you may have had in the previous year. As far as words, we want to suggest words that resonate with empowerment, with growth, with resilience, and also something that's relevant to you as a person. So I've picked a word for the year, for the last few years, and I wanted to take the time to share those with you, just to kind of give an example. It doesn't have to be anything special. And sometimes they are like literally four letters, right? So the first year I did it was 21. And I think dealing with 2020, right? I was like, oh, I need to work on myself here because we were still in the house for the most part and kind of shut in. So I was like, okay, what does this look like for me for this year? Like 2020, we don't ever want to have another 2020. So what does 21 look like moving forward? And I think with just the loss that we experienced as a world, it was like, okay, I need to figure out what I want to do for 2021. So the word I chose was invest. And it wasn't always monetary investment. It was like, I want to invest in my marriage. I want to invest in being a better mother. I want to invest in relationships, right? So that year I did try to be more intentional in relationships. You know, as a busy adult, sometimes it's hard to manage friendships, right? We have to literally pull out a calendar to have a lunch date kind of thing. So I wanted to just make sure I invested in my relationships with my friends, with my grandparents even, right? Because it was real easy to make the excuse of, well, you know, they're elderly and, you know, COVID's going around, and I want to make sure I don't make them sick. Well, that just means you just sit across the room from them because with 2020 and the year, you know, how it affected us as a world, it was like, tomorrow's not promised. So I need to make sure I'm intentional with investing my time because a lot of times time is of the essence and it's limited. So just being intentional. In 2022, I chose the word growth because I wanted to grow in all aspects of life. And one of the big growths that really stands out to me is that I moved my practice from a one-room setup to a six-room suite. And so I was growing. You know, I was like, okay, I want to grow my practice. I want to grow my reach on how I can impact my community. And then last year was 23, and my word was give. So I, whether it was giving of my time or giving of money, right? So supporting different nonprofits and then just, again, giving my time, which is very valuable when you don't have a lot of it, right? So it's like being intentional. So this year, my word is passive. And I kind of laugh because I'm like, okay, a lot of times that means what? Passive income. Yes, that's part of the list. But the other passive that I kind of came to recently with Crystal, we were talking about these topics, was being passive in life sometimes, right? So we don't always have to be so active. It's okay to take the nap. It's okay to, you know, they cut you off in traffic to not have a whole fit, right? I'm going to be passive. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to chill and just sometimes let what happens happen. Because we feel like we have control of things, and a lot of times we don't. That's a facade, right? So being passive and maybe letting things go sometimes that we might not have previously. Because every action doesn't necessarily require an action. So Crystal, I would love for you to kind of explain how can we incorporate, once we select the word, into our daily lives? Yeah, and that was so good. Thank you for expressing that. Oh, I love the idea of some passivity, just like chilling a little bit. So incorporating a word of the day into our daily life. So how to keep this word present in everyday life, such as doing things where you can have reflection. I really actually like that you brought up this passive part, because I think that's going to be an important part for this part of navigating, understanding what word you're going to take into the day. You know, sometimes when you hear passivity, it can also be like this feminine portion of a feminine principle. You hear people these days talking a lot about masculine principles, feminine principles. That masculine is very active, but that feminine is relaxing and it's in a reflection. So these types of things are perfect to be able to determine what would be meaningful for you. So in journaling, you can find a lot of reflection that you can do for yourself. You can put visual reminders. I wanted to mention that one thing I have done, because I haven't done a word of the day, for the past four years or so, my family, immediate family here, the kids, and when I was married, my husband, we would do a vision board on January 1st, like individually, and then we would explain what the vision board meant. Or, you know, what it was we wanted to achieve. We would just explain our vision boards to one another. So this year, my kids, we still did it, and I had my mom come over, which was a beautiful, it was beautiful. As a person who brought me into the world and the children, people I've brought into the world, it just was a very safe space to do these vision boards. But what I do remember about the vision board this year, ironically, Dr. Kimiko, when you're talking about this, is I did put a word for the year on there. You know, a lot of things on the board, but there was a word for the year that I put on the board, which I haven't necessarily done, or maybe I have a little bit. Like last year or two years ago, the main word was life on the board, and it was like all these parts of myself or aspects that I want to bring alive in my life. And the interesting thing I was telling Dr. Kimiko about this is I usually have my vision board at my bedside on the wall. And when I look at it, like at the end of that year, and even last year, it's almost all those things that I put on the vision board are now moving parts. They're active in some type of a way, where when I had the vision, many of them were not. And actually, many of them were pretty scary to me to put on there because it's like, I've never done this before, or how am I going to do this? But to see that they're all active parts now is really, man, it's like, I think I'll always do them. But then also affirmations, when we talk about that word of the day, it could be that word of the year, it could be what is it that you want to affirm. An affirmation, that I am statement, it can be so much more powerful to say it that way. If it's this year, what I put on my vision board was transformation. So it could be I am transformation, or I am transforming, or you know what I mean? But that word transformation is going to be really big for me this year, because this past year, I've had a lot of changes in relationships so many ways, relationship with my business, relationship in my career, relationship in romance, relationship with my children, like my son is graduating this year, and I was emotional this morning. But all of the things were heavy, I lost a brother, all these relationships of a lot of transition, but transformation to me speaks to allowing the difficult things that have come up or even, you know, just the way, the strength, the power in how things are transitioning to allow them to transform instead of like being victimized by it or sitting and just like being sad about a thing, like these things are not brought about to cause you to just soak. It's better for me to think of this as, okay, this is an opportunity for transformation. Even as a parent, having two children who are about to be on the other side of my role of raising them in the way I've known, now I have to transform into a different type of a parent. You're always relevant, but it's going to be a different connection that I have with them. So yeah, transformation, and that was what was on my vision board, but I think that that could be another way to put that main word on there and then put the themes around, well, in what way does this word mean something for you for this year? That's good, Crystal. Yes, definitely. And, you know, I personally have not had a vision board the last couple of years, and I realized, like, when I did have them, I had two. One was little, one was big, and they were right where I would typically do most of my work. And I would, you know, do my work, and sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm done. I don't want to finish this. But something about seeing that vision, like, but are you really done, right? So a lot of times, so we've talked about two different ways that you can work on yourself, right? Incorporating whether it's a word, a vision board, combination of the two, but then there's also just good old-fashioned goal setting, right? And so I used to cringe when I would hear the term smart goals. I'm like, oh, no, I don't want, it's too much, right? But for structure, smart goals are a wonderful way to make sure we're kind of staying on track. Yes, we can be visual. Some of us are planners. Some of us are not. And so I do think that having smart goals can be helpful. So SMART is an acronym, and it's often used in business, but it can also be used in our personal life. So the S for SMART is specific. So we need to identify a specific area of improvement. The first step is to figure out, like, where do we need to improve? And we need to be intentional in identifying that area in our life we would like to focus on. It doesn't really matter how big or small it is, but being specific helps to kind of chip away the vagueness of some goals. Maybe like, I need to lose weight, right? That's very vague. So it's like, well, specifically, I need to, that we could start with that. I need to work on my health, or I need to lose weight, right? And then measurable. The N in SMART is measurable. What will success look like? Once you have the goal, you need to figure out how to measure the progress of it, right? So being specific and having a measurable goal helps us. So now we've chipped it down even further. Okay, I want to lose weight, and I want to lose 15 pounds. That's measurable versus I want to feel better. How do we gauge that, right? There might be some scale you can use, but really we need to figure out how can this be measured? Is there a measurable way to do that? So Crystal's going to explain the next couple of letters of that SMART acronym. Yeah, I'm definitely going to apply this before this month is out, because just listening to this is really helpful. So unlike you, the idea of SMART goal, it does feel intimidating. But what I see is it allows you structure, and I function very well on structure. So this next one is achievable. So when we talk about achievable, it's like, is it something that you can do? Am I able to do this thing? And when choosing your goal and how you measure it, make sure that it is something that you know you can really achieve. While your goal should not be super easy, we don't want it to be something that you're not able to achieve. We want it to be if you work hard, it can happen, and you can stick to it, and you can stick to the plan. We don't want it to be so hard that you can't stick to it, but we don't want it to be so easy that we're also not giving ourselves some level of challenge, because we know with challenge that we can have growth and we see results. So with that being said, we also want this to be realistic. That's what I'm hearing from achievable is that we want the goals to be realistic. So does it make sense for you in this current phase of your life? And so results don't happen overnight. We understand that. And it can be a long journey to achieve a goal. We also understand that, but starting is very important. And so to avoid being discouraged when you're on this path, and when we're on this path, we want to make sure that we collect goals that are really attainable in the timeframes that we're setting for ourselves. And that makes sense with the options and the resources that we have in our lives currently, because we want to be able to achieve. And once we've achieved something, it gives us like this, like, oh, I did that. And now I can do something else. You know, we don't want to be like not achieving it and feeling like, and that becomes a whole opposite effect. We want to be feeling good about what we're doing and then give us momentum. And you've got the last one, Kimiko. So the last one is going to be time-related. So we need to set a deadline for ourselves, right? So, okay, I want to lose weight, 15 pounds. I can achieve this. That is a realistic thing. But I can't do it in a week, right? So setting an end date for a goal gives us something to work toward and to keep us going, right? It needs to be achievable, realistic, specific, and achievable. So in closing, I hope that we have at least giving you some information to set goals for yourself, not only for the year, but just life in general, right? Whether it's a single word, whether it's a vision board, and giving you a framework to use as far as having that goal be something that we can actually achieve. So we appreciate you, Queens. Thank you for tuning in. If you are not a member of our Facebook group, we want to take the time to invite you. It's Queens Unburdened, a mental health perspective for women of color. And not only add yourself, but add a few people that you think might be of benefit from the information that we shared. Thank you all and happy new year. Happy new year. Take care.