It is a common understanding that making important changes in your life reduces struggle and adds value to the quality of your living experience. Change can also help reduce stress and increase happiness.

You can tweak your physical appearance by changing your color pallet, style of clothes, makeup or your exercise routine. But lasting change only comes from within, inspiring habits that will impact your life and reframe your age in decades to come.

Decide How You Want to Grow Yourself

It’s an exciting process to learn more about yourself. Self-reflection creates an internal energy that can’t be found on Amazon or in malls – if you still shop in malls – or by exchanging gossip at happy hour. It’s a life-long journey.

You uncover things you never knew about yourself, you change the order of importance in your beliefs and perhaps, even add breadth and depth to your value system. You may also notice that people in your life may fade away due to attrition; or things that were once meaningful are no longer relevant.

The following tips might give you some ideas about how to learn more about yourself, create fervent intentions to do the work and reap the rewards with joy.

Figure Out What You Believe

Beliefs and values set the tone for how you live your life. As you get older and wiser, it’s a good practice to give some distance to what matters to you most – family, travel, friends, volunteering. It is then that you can change or even enlarge your life.

It’s good to remember what you were taught to believe and what you were supposed to believe, and then release those aspects in order to clarify your most important core values.

Listen to What Your Heart Is Telling You

It is not uncommon to have some confusion about what your heart is telling you. This difficulty comes from too much stimuli in your environment, too many observations and opinions by others and too many distractions, all of which create a false sense of security.

Clarify your approach to finding out what will transform your soul while discovering the truth of your feelings.

With patience, courage and a pure heart front and center, you can take small and simple steps toward growth. Put your hands on your heart every night when you fall asleep as a way to connect heart to spirit.

Identify Your Old Patterns

Reflecting on the past – your mistakes and misguided steps – tends to be endemic to the human condition. While past reflection may reduce guilt and shame, you need not have regrets. You are human and fallible.

If your old patterns reoccur – the same type of boyfriend or girlfriend keeps reappearing – it might be helpful to understand what attracts or triggers you to engage in negative behavior.

These old patterns are wake up calls that encourage you to change habits that are self-destructive. Be careful not to judge or label, rather embrace old patterns with acceptance.

Yoga and Meditation Help to Ease Any Struggle

Yoga is a moving meditation. It creates an environment that reduces stress and anxiety and takes the practitioner into the quiet spaces in their mind. Start with the simple restorative yoga and find inner peace, create joy and discover like-minded communities.

Yoga and meditation reduce the negative reactive responses that often impede growth. Yoga keeps you present, allows you to breathe with calmness and opens your heart to a generosity of spirit that puts gratitude first. When you practice gentle yoga and meditation, you create your own personal universe of truth.

Stop Resisting

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. Resistance gives you no opportunity to discover new paradigms or options for better health and better financial strategies. You’re stuck in quicksand where your fears will become your reality.

Instead of stretching your mind, resistance allows you to make endless excuses not to do what you want to do.

Pushing through resistance means that every morning of every day, one day at a time, you will get up with an intention to do the most important thing in your life. Each day you should be vigilant, aware and certain about how you want to add value to your life.

Find an Exercise Routine

There are all kinds of exercises to take on in the new year. There is no excuse to opt out of physical exercise because with Medicare you are part of the Silver Sneaker brigade. Your senior insurance allows you to go to a gym for free or in exchange for a small free.

You can now swim laps or go to swim class, do light weights, spin, step – there are so many things to do inside, but don’t forget to look outside – walking, biking, hiking. Don’t forget yoga – gentle, restorative, flow. Most importantly, find the exercise that makes you smile.

Eat Green, Drink Green

Recent studies have suggested that a diet high in green foods is one of the mainstays to prevent dementia or Alzheimer’s. Start the day with a green drink with protein and see how your energy soars.

Steam spinach, make a salad, add greens to eggs, fish or casseroles. There are unlimited ways to add greens to your diet. Be daring and eat greens for breakfast.

Follow some of these amazing tips into the new year, and take pride in your new routine and sparkling positive intentions. You will discover more of who are you going to be!

What new routines and positive intentions are you setting for yourself in 2018? Which toxic patterns are you leaving behind? Please join the conversation below!