New Year, New Values… (January 2025)
As we start 2025, we’re bombarded with the usual messages about New Year’s resolutions—particularly around weight and exercise.
The diet and weight loss industries capitalize on New Year’s resolutions, using this annual ritual to perpetuate diet culture messaging. Have you considered pushing back against this by doing something different this year? Could you revisit your resolutions and goals and choose to not center them around food, body and movement?
What about making a resolution (or setting an intention) to reassessing your values?
A place to start would be to reflect on these three questions: What do you value in your life? What do you value in relationships? What do you value in your career?
If you haven’t thought about these questions before, I can tell you that getting older—especially with living through the pandemic—was what got me thinking about them.
One benefit to reflecting on our values is that sometimes it helps us realize that certain things that seem like a big deal to us may not actually be a big deal when we look at the big picture. When we put things in perspective and become clearer about what’s truly important to us, we can allow ourselves to feel the initial upset about lesser problems—but then turn our lemons into lemonade.
Knowing our values helps us look at friendships differently and be more aware of how we speak to people and how we hope and wish people will speak to us. We can choose to put more energy into some relationships and less into others if we realize that a relationship is one sided. Knowing our values can also help us think differently about our health and well-being, especially our emotional well-being. We might also think about if what we would like to do in our profession—or if we want to change careers and what we would do instead.
I am blessed that I have chosen a career that I absolutely love. I’ve never gotten bored, tired or frustrated with, and it’s been the one and only career I have ever had. I work with wonderful people in my practice, helping them improve their relationships with food, their bodies, their medical situation and love collaborating with all the wonderful clinicians that I have had the opportunity to work with for more than two decades.
Maybe living your values would look like mentoring a young child, being of service to a senior, or volunteering at an animal shelter. Whatever your values, this is a wonderful time for reflection, and possibly making some real changes in your life. We sometimes worry that we might upset or offend someone for changing jobs, ending a friendship that has run its course, or making new decisions about how we want to spend our precious, limited time. But remember, this is YOUR life, and life is not a dress rehearsal—it’s in motion now.
May you have a wonderful start to 2025.
