The Big New Year Nourish!

Have you been setting New Year's resolutions of denial, deprivation and detox for the last 10 years? Time to do it differently in 2009.

It's not very often you hear a life coach say this but what would it be like if you just gave up this year? Gave up 'trying' to change the things that you have tried to change forever? Motivation, pushing ourselves can often work in the short term but long-term we can fall back into our old habits and into that pit of self-loathing. Come on, admit it, when have you ever stuck to a New Year's Resolution? This year, let's try a new strategy.

It's that old adage, if you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got. So what if you gave yourself permission to give up all the dieting/deprivation and denial and try something new instead? Often our bad habits are in place for a reason – they have an unconscious pay-off – our half a bottle of wine a night may soothe our anxiety, our over-eating gives us comfort, our smoking gives us a 'smoke screen' to hide behind. Unless we tackle the core of the issue versus the symptom, we'll just keep on repeating on the same old binge-denial cycle.

So what would it be like to put your focus and energy on the word 'nourishment' this New Year? How can you nourish yourself in 2009? From ditching the rice cakes and eating only things that taste great (but don't make you feel guilty) to creating your own home-spa, make a commitment to ONLY doing things that delight you. Banish all shoulds, oughts or musts. Apply delicious lotions and potions, play soothing music, eat cake in the bath, indulge. Ask yourself – if I could improve my wellbeing by nourishing my mind, body and soul – how would I do that?

Once you've started on nourishing your internal life, next start looking at your external life - look at your environment. "Our environments play a huge part in whether we can sustain healthy habits," says Martha Beck, a regular on Oprah and author of The Four Day Win (Piatkus, £10.99) and my favourite life coach. Beck cites a study on addiction that found rats which were kept in cages soon became addicted to morphine-laced water but those who were kept in a 'rat park' – where they were allowed to roam free – actively avoided it. Researchers concluded that the more freedom we feel we have, the less we turn to external sources to soothe our anxiety.

So try this exercise - list the three people, places, activities, situations that make you feel 'trapped, and ask yourself – what do they all have in common? Then make a list of all the people, places, activities, situations that make you feel calm and peaceful. Then ask – what do they all have in common? In four-day chunks, eliminate or transform the elements from list one and start to increase contact with all the things and people on list two. This enables you to 'remove much of the frustration that made painkilling of bad habits necessary', says Beck. These strategies are all about making you feel good. When you feel good, you don't have to prop yourself up with caffeine, alcohol, cake and cigarettes. This New Year, make only one resolution – create a 'feel-good' regime that is about nurturing yourself from the inside out. And I guarantee 2009 will be your best year yet.
Be Your Own Life Coach: 3 Steps to a Lovely Life in 2009 Change your life with these simple exercises.

1. Enjoy yourself – stop suffering and identify what you like/what pleases you/what inspires you/what you love. Rip up your to-do list of shoulds/oughts and ask yourself - if you weren't people pleasing/had a list of must do/ought tos, what would you do with your time? Write a list of 10 things you just love to do with a spare hour/a spare afternoon/a weekend/a week. What would you have to do right now to book out a free hour today (or this week, if you're struggling)? Now do it.

2. Lower your standards and raise the quality of your life by resigning yourself to the fact that you're not perfect and no one else is either. There is nothing wrong with you. And you don't need to be fixed. And neither does anyone else. We're all doing the best we can with the backgrounds/parenting etc we have come from. Repeat after me: I'm not perfect and no one else is either. Just do the best you can in the mood you're in.

3. Answer the following:
• If you didn't have to prove that you were good enough today – how could you cut yourself some slack? Be specific.
• What are you naturally good at – how can you do one effortless thing today?
• If you were brave, what projects could you let go of? What phone call do you have to make to make that a reality in the next 48 hours?