One of the challenges that all of us face in the New Year, is living up to our own expectations. Most of us will set more goals than we can handle, and when we become overwhelmed, we end up not doing any of them. I call this process, decision fatigue. We want to go to the gym every day, do an hour of yoga, an hour of meditation, study a new subject, learn a language or instrument, deepen our relationships with partners, friends and family. This is just a short list to show you what I mean. In the face of so much growth, many of us falter. Not because we don’t want to achieve our goals, but because they aren’t structured and we have other obligations.

So how can you make this year different than the last? Maybe you went to the gym for all of January last year, and stopped shortly after; or maybe you did your meditation for the first half of the year, but work got busy and it fell off. My suggestion is this, pick one goal. One monumental change that you can make, that will change your life for the better. Instead of saying I’m going to make these 10 changes, promise yourself to make ONE. For me, it’s to spend more time expanding my knowledge.

I have chosen not to choose any specifics, because when we lose steam we lose our drive. I have written down and placed in my wallet “Do what you fear, and fear ceases.” What does this have to do with wisdom? Everything. For me, the lack of progress I see in my physical or mental health, always stems from a fear of failure. The actions I have taken in the past, lead me to here, which is great, but I could have done a lot more, faster. Most of us deal with this mental warfare, we can’t all be gold medal Olympians who do the maximum action every day. We also can’t beat ourselves up about what-ifs or what could have been. Anxiety, is living in the past or the future. In order to beat our inner bitch, we have to take action now.

So wisdom, in the sense I intend to manifest, is the action of doing it today. So if I tell my partner that I will work on a project tomorrow, I’ve asked her to tell me to do it now. You’ll be amazed how great it feels when you tackle something now, instead of dreading doing it later. When you appreciate the little wins, the big wins come faster. You start building drive, momentum, and a belief you can do it.

One thing I hate doing at work, is making phone calls to CPAs. I have a terrible fear of rejection, which has been such a challenge for me that I talk about it to my therapist. I am blessed to work with a saint who has a PhD in Energy Trauma, the first person to identify as a Mystic when I asked him about his beliefs almost 10 years ago. At the time the word meant little to me, but after taking an 8-year hiatus from him, I felt compelled to reach out and work on myself with my first spiritual mentor.

When I was talking to Dr. Lane about my anxiety about making calls, he asked me to visualize the emotions I felt. After a little guidance, I came to visualize a giant red ball, which I believe was the weight of my anxiety. After doing some acupressure on my chest meridians, he asked me to visualize another object, and the color associated with it. I came to see a yellow energy, which eventually formed into a triangle. Then I began to see the red ball, on top of the yellow triangle. He asked if I saw any cracks on the triangle, and I did not. Then he asked me to thank the red ball, for protecting me from failure. He asked if I felt any less anxiety after this, and I didn’t. What really helped, was changing my frame of thought. When I came to see the red orb, as this inner weakness, and that the holy grail laid on the other side of my fear, I started to feel less strain on my body. He then instructed me to visualize the red ball, moving off the yellow triangle.

As I did this, I began to feel the weight of my anxiety, change forms. Instead of seeing this fear as something that was crippling me, I saw it as a challenge to grow in my career. Everything I wanted in life, was held back by this red ball’s weight. So now, every time I make a phone call, I have a visualization that I look at of this process. I made this in photoshop, and hopefully it helps you. This wisdom of knowing that if I do the things today, that I have been putting off until tomorrow, I will feel infinitely better about my life.