#118 Fresh Starts and New Beginnings

Read the full episode transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Your Favorite You. I want to be one of the first people to wish you a happy and emotionally healthy 2025.

When I was planning ahead and saw that this episode was going to be released on New Year's Eve I wanted to talk about something that's relevant to the dawn of a new year. So today we are going to be talking about fresh starts and new beginnings.

Now just to be perfectly clear one does not have to wait for a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day to have a fresh start and a new beginning. Each new moment in your life can be a fresh start or a new beginning. You don't have to wait for the calendar to tell you when you can start fresh or begin anew. In fact I recommend that you do not wait for anything other than your favorite version of yourself to tell you when it's time to start something new or to give yourself a do over.

So you can be mid-sentence mid-thought mid-day mid-week mid-month mid-year mid-life and make the decision to start over. You can choose any point as long as you are still alive and cognizant to start fresh. This is a choice you can make.

I saw a post the other day on social media. I love massages and massage therapists and I truly believe that they can help us heal our body and our psyche if we're open to it. Hi Autumn if you're listening. So I follow an account called the Magical Hands Physical Therapy, and they posted a reel about making the choice of revolving or evolving. The gist of it was that the universe will keep putting you in similar situations until you learn the lesson that you need to learn. It will keep you in a revolving pattern where you find yourself thinking, “How in the world did I end up here again?” Or if you're not so nice to yourself, like, “What the fuck am I doing here again?”

So you can kind of keep the same patterns until you learn the lesson. Once you actually learn the lesson you can choose to evolve and step out of the revolving door and make a fresh start to begin something new. In order to get a new result you have to be willing to change. You have to be willing to let go of the comfortable patterns that are only comfortable because they feel familiar.

Yes, fresh starts and doing things in a new way can be a bit uncomfortable and evolving is typically not cozy and comfy. Evolving is the key to growing and becoming a new favorite version of you. I promise. And now that I'm seeing this again, not evolving is not cozy or comfy either. So let's make that clear.

So what does it look like to evolve in practice? You can be mid-sentence about to quote unquote, give a friend unsolicited advice and stop yourself. You can start a new sentence asking instead what would be most helpful to you right now?

You can be midday running around like a crazy person taking off your list of chores and stop yourself. Again asking yourself wait what do I really need to do right now? And if it's a nap you go home and you take a nap. Or you go to your car and you take a nap whatever.

You can be mid-week at work doing all the work yourself even though you have plenty of people working with you just waiting for you to delegate some of the tasks on your list and decide to delegate instead of martyring yourself by doing it all by yourself.

You could be mid-month recognizing that your body feels much better when you get some movement in every day. You have not been moving nearly as much as your body needs you recognize and you decide right then and there that you will keep your commitment to yourself and start moving every day even if it's just for five to 10 minutes a day even if it is simple stretching. You don't have to sign up for a marathon or an Ironman. You don't even have to leave your house. You can just lay on the floor and stretch.

You could be mid-year recognizing that you're holding yourself up to a ridiculous made-up standard of being a good mom or a good wife or a good daughter or a good employee recognizing that you have never actually defined it for yourself. What is good? Who the fuck even knows? I bet if you ask a thousand people, you could get at least a million different answers. You could decide mid-year to define it for yourself and start living by that new standard that you made up for yourself. I can't begin to tell you how fucking freeing that is.

I just got off a call with one of my groups and we were talking about how much time is saved, you know, once people start getting coaching and they stop doing the shoulds and have tos and musts it's pretty amazing.

You could be midlife, recognizing that all the perfectionism and people pleasing and control enthusiasm that got you to this point in your life isn't the way you want to finish out your life. Realizing that it's either revolve or evolve.

You could sign up for a coaching program. Then hire a marriage coach. Then decide to become a coach yourself. Then leave your 22-year career in pediatrics to become an entrepreneur and coach amazing women to love themselves and therefore love their lives. Oh wait this is sounding familiar 'cause that's what I did.

When you're starting fresh and starting new there's so much possibility out there for you. Of course your brain will want to argue for your limitations. That's okay, that's just what brains do. You can hire me or hire another coach to help you with your fresh start your new beginning. I can show you all the possibility that is waiting for you to simply decide and then you get to reach out and grab it if you want it.

Now that we've discussed the impact of fresh starts and new beginnings and when you can start them and that type of thing I want to add some super sexy nuance especially as we start the new year. I want to impress upon you the idea that while striving for personal growth and fresh starts and new beginnings is of course valuable it's equally important to practice self-acceptance.

I would love it if we could all recognize that we are all worthy and deserving of love and respect, regardless of whether we meet our own or others' standards of quote unquote good. Oftentimes this takes the form of me coaching you to believe that you do not need to change even one iota and that you still want to make the changes you're seeking anyway. It's a choice.

It is uber important to remind ourselves of the importance of self-compassion when we are navigating change. Making significant life changes will very likely be challenging and of course will involve setbacks and missteps. I'd like to stress the idea of being kind to yourself during these transitions and giving yourself the option to view mistakes as opportunities for learning and growth rather than reasons for self-criticism and self-flagellation.

Another thing to consider as you make these fresh starts and new beginnings is the option of seeking support. Embarking on a journey of personal change can be both thrilling and daunting and it's okay to seek support from people going on a similar journey.

This is where the beauty of group coaching comes in. When you choose group coaching you get as a bonus a built-in network of supportive women who understand and encourage your goals. The other women in my groups can provide invaluable motivation and wonderful examples of the reward of change over time.

The next super sexy nuance I want to bring to the fore of your mind is likely something you learned back in high school but may have forgotten. I know it was a theme for a year of my high school experience at Elyria Catholic and one that I have lost sight of from time to time. So life is all about the journey, not just the destination. If you choose it, personal growth is a lifelong process and it's important to find joy and meaning in the journey itself. Celebrating small victories, appreciating the lessons learned from the challenges. We are either winning or we are learning here at Melissa Parsons Coaching. This helps my clients and me maintain a sense of curiosity and openness to new experiences.

Finally the other nuance that I want to offer is to stay bendy my friends. Rigidity is a joy killer except in very certain situations that we will not go into today. Maintaining flexibility is key to sustaining your personal growth journey. While having clear goals and standards is important I promise you that they are not the be-all and the end-all that we are socialized to think that they are. If you can remain open to adjusting your path as you gain new skills new insights and new experiences you will have so much more fun. Embrace adaptability and be willing to recalibrate your definition of good as you continue to learn and grow.

I don't want any of my clients to come into our coaching container and leave our coaching container with the same definition of a wonderful life or a favorite version of themselves. This should also evolve over time. So in summary I encourage all of you my beautiful listeners to embrace fresh starts and new beginnings at any moment in life.

I want to emphasize the importance of personal growth, self-acceptance and self-compassion. Change can be challenging and also rewarding and seeking support from others on a similar journey can provide motivation and encouragement. I want also to stress the significance of finding joy in the journey itself, celebrating the little wins along the way and maintaining flexibility in your goals and standards. This can be an ongoing lifelong process that requires adaptability and a willingness to recalibrate your definition of success as you learn and grow.

If you want help with this please please please book your consult to join us in our next group coaching cohort. We start on Thursday January 9th at 12:30 PM Eastern Time. The group will work together through at least the first half of 2025. I would love to have you as a member of our Your Favorite You group. To book your consult please go to melissaparsonscoaching.com/group to sign up for a time to talk to me.

It's also not too late to join us at my Reset Align Connect Retreat in Tulum, Mexico from January 27th to January 31st. You can find more information about that on my website melissaparsonscoaching.com/retreat. We would love to have you join us there in Tulum.

Happy New Year everyone. Stay safe and be well.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!