Welcome to the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Soon. I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner, food bugger at Small Eats, author of Not in My Desk Lunch, graphic designer, and avid learner. In my nutrition practice, I help nourish overworked women through customized nutrition and microness.
This podcast is here to educate, inspire, and empower you to grow, try new things, and live a life you truly feel good about, one small step at a time. Each show has small steps that you can try and see how they work for you. You can find all the show notes, information, and small steps about this show at small-eats.com slash podcast. Remember, the materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only, and are not to be considered as a substitute for medical, professional advice, and diagnosis for treatment.
Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Small Steps Podcast. I am recording a mini episode. I was trying to smash this into the last episode, and I realized before recording it that that probably wasn't the best idea that they should be separate podcasts.
So here you go, with another little mini treat for you. If you're listening to this at the time of this drops, 2018 is winding down, and holy shit, 2019 is coming up really quickly. And I am not a fan of New Year's Solutions. I haven't been for several years, because a lot of times that's just like diet culture, telling you that you need to change who you are, and you need to lose fat, eat less, buy this stuff that will somehow magically make you feel better.
And then when you quote Fall Off The Wagon, oh look, this magical program is here for you to help you. Fuck that. You can set goals. This is a little bit of a rant before I get onto the rest of it.
You can fucking set goals whenever the fuck you want. It doesn't matter. Just because it's a gen one doesn't mean anything. You can set a goal whenever you want.
You can pivot whenever you want. It doesn't have to... Gen one is very arbitrary. You don't have to.
What I started doing, that I started doing last year, thanks to my friend, is I started setting a word for the year. That's basically like an intention for the entire year or a value that guides me through the year. And that has been very helpful because that honestly really helps me make decisions. So why I joined a mastermind and why I joined other things or put myself out there or said yes to certain things or said no to certain things was because I had this one word that I would go back to and be like, oh hey, does this thing align with this word, this theme for my year, this intention for my year?
And the answer was yes. I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to keep looking into this or I'm going to say yes. And if the answer was no, that would give me a lot more thought to like, okay, well, why do I want this?
Do I really want this? Is this some old impulses to just say yes to everything because as a people pleaser and a person that loves shiny things, like I was like, ooh, this would be fun, but is it actually fun for you or is this the shinyness fun? So having a word can be really helpful because you have something to kind of check yourself against and be like, oh, is this what I want? Well, what about my word?
Also, the word can change if you feel like while you're in during the year, you're like, oh, wow, like life is completely swerved and changed. And I think that this word doesn't fit with me anymore. I'm going to change this word. Totally cool.
Makes sense. Life happens. So my word for 2018, which I actually set towards the end of 2017, like maybe in November of 2017 was connection. And when I said that word, I said it because I wanted to connect with other like-minded people, other like-minded women.
I wanted to have other people that understood things that I was going through and things that I liked on a deeper level. And I made certain decisions like joining the mastermind and a few others to really connect, deepening friendships made those decisions. And that word really embodied my 2018. In addition to all the other things that you heard in the last podcast, it really put me on this path that I honestly couldn't have ever predicted.
It changed into also connecting in with myself, which wasn't like the cool thing about setting this word is that it could have other- you can connect it back to things that unfold for you that you didn't even realize. I didn't realize that by setting the word connection that I was also connecting in with different parts of myself that had either always been there and maybe I hadn't looked at them for a while or connecting with certain parts of me that really need a healing or that really hadn't been around for a while that I wanted to bring back. And I did come back to or connecting with parts of me that I didn't know were there. So that was really cool, unexpected.
Like, oh, connection. So your word can mean a lot of different things. Maybe the intention that you come in with that word, maybe that isn't all that's there to that word. You never know.
But the word of 2019 is community. I thought of this word a few months ago, just like the last year's word or this year's word. I thought about it because it means a lot of things for me personally, professionally, a lot of things. I really want to find other multiracial and biracial people and be in community with them and to really find a bigger group of people that understand this very specific perspective that I have because I know we all have the same perspective, but I just don't know a lot of other biracial people.
So I really want to meet more of them and really be understood and seen and have my experience reflected back in someone else and have them be reflected back in me. I really want to plug into, help grow the not white community in the wellness world, have more people of color, more different sized people, different able people in the wellness world and create a new vision around what wellness looks like. So that's like finding other people within that community. So that's my intention for the word community.
And I don't even, I don't know, like, I don't know what other things will come of setting that word. I feel like it's also really powerful to say these things out loud, to make them clear because there's a lot of power in saying it, whether it's just you, your friend or two and an attacker of people that you trust, maybe even the internet, if that's comfortable for you. Think on what you want to bring into the world. What feels really important to you that you want to cultivate, that you want to bring in that you want to focus on, maybe it's tied to a value that you have, maybe you want to really go deeper into one particular value that you have.
You don't know what your values are. Definitely do a value exercise. You can Google list of values. There are a lot of them.
You can go through and start a bunch. Or I got to, you can go to my private Facebook group, the small eat circle, and there is a value worksheet in that Facebook group. It's only in that Facebook group. We just request a join you can add and you can go through that exercise and see what your values are.
Once you see what your values are, you can also see, oh, do I want to focus on one of these more? Or there might be something in your life that you really want to focus on? Maybe healing is something that you really want to focus on in 2019. When you know that you really want to focus on healing, that can help you clear out other stuff.
It's not something to beat yourself up about. It's not something to like, martyr yourself to. Oh, well, I said this word healing. I do this kind of like, throw all the other things to the side.
Oh, no, I can't do this because it's all about healing and this one thing over here is not really about healing. Make sure that this word does not become a weapon for yourself, for the perfectionist in you. If that's a thing that's relevant for you, for the people, please are in you, for the person that needs to hold on and can only do this one thing this one way, like make sure the word that you choose and the intention behind it does not become something you use against yourself. And if you do find that you're using that against yourself, take a deep breath.
Remember what the word actually is about and try as much as you can to separate yourself from using that word as a weapon. Give yourself some space and grace to do what you have to do to realign to that word. And again, if that word doesn't feel relevant to you anymore, you can also let it go. But if you still feel like you're checking with yourself and you're like, yeah, that word actually is something I really want to cultivate and really want to focus on.
So what can you do to realign to the word? It could look different and it could, the word could unfold. It could unfold for you in a lot of different ways. Like, you may not know until you reflect on like, oh, this is how this word showed up for me.
Like I didn't realize until I was writing about it that connection, that connection to myself that I had done a lot of connecting with myself more so in many years than I had prior. I didn't know that until I reflected. So it was also why I talk about juggling so much because that gives you the space to reflect and think on things. Think on it.
You also don't need to have an answer on Jan 1, like what your word is. Maybe your word comes to you slowly or like mid-January you look and you're like, oh, well, what's really important to me right now? Maybe what's important to you right now is how you come to that word, like maybe there are certain events or places or people that you really want to see attend, attend to in 2019. And that's how you come to your word.
You can ask the question, what do I want my word to be? You can just let it simmer. And I might come back to you later. I might come back to you in a few days.
I might come back to you in a few hours. You don't know. Or write it out. Like, what do I want my word to be?
And just let your brain just like dump string of consciousness until you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense like what this word would be. It's quite possible. I'm keeping this short. So I'm going to talk about the small steps for finding your word for 2019.
First, check in with your values. If you have them already, look at them and see if there's one that you want to double down on. If you haven't done that, go to my Facebook group, the small E circle, request to join, download the values worksheet and see what's important to you. Pick one word out from there or one word in general that comes to you.
Maybe that's after writing or reflecting or asking the question. Let me sit for a few days. Like pick a word that feels exciting and attractive to you that you really want to invest in and cultivate more. Another thing that's really important is to write it down, make it visual so that you see it all the time.
You're reminded of it all the time, whether that's putting it on post a note, putting in your bathroom, putting on your laptop or computer screen, putting it in your phone in front of your door when you leave every day, like put it someplace that you can see it so that you're reminded that this is something that you're cultivating. When you have a major decision on, should I join this group? Should I invest in this thing? Should I take this class?
Should I meet these people? Should I do anything that feels big and you're like, I don't know, check back in with this word. Will doing this thing, going to this place, meeting these people, does that embody this word? If it does, maybe give it a try.
If it doesn't, it's something you want to do. Just do it anyway. But if it does, try it. See what's it like.
And as you go throughout your year, continue to check in with yourself and see, does this word still feel right to me? How am I embodying this word? How am I not embodying this word? How is this word really showing up for me in ways that I didn't think all things to consider and think about?
So small steps. If you haven't, find out what your values are. Pick one of those values if you want and see if that aligns for you. Ask what that is, journal on it.
Write it down and make it visual. Check in with yourself when you're making big decisions and see if that aligns with the word. See if you want to proceed with it. Check in with yourself throughout the year to see if that word is actually something that still feels relevant to you and if it isn't, change it.
So those are all the small steps for figuring out what your word is for 2019. And I would love to know what is your word for 2019? What is it? And tell me on Instagram at small underscore eats.
You can tell me in the private Facebook group, the small eats circle. If you want, you can go to my site and you can contact me and email me. Let me know. I would love to know what your word is for 2019.
And please remember to subscribe to the podcast. Please if you have a minute and you love this podcast, please rate it. So get seen by other people and write a review that would also be really lovely. It doesn't really take that long.
And I will see you in if you're listening to this live. I'll see you in 2019. Have you have a great rest of your year. And I hope that your word is something that you're really excited about.
Remember, you can do it. It's all stuck in time.