2020 Mindset Shift
Do you do a “word for the year?”
Last year was my first time doing so, and I really valued it as a time of reflection going into the year and as the year went on. The impetus to trying this approach to New Year Resolutions came from a speaker at our local @mops_international meeting who encouraged us to do so by going to the One who knows us best for our “one word” in the upcoming year (instead of coming up with an arbitrary resolution). This resonated so much with me and led me to pray over what mine might be. You can read more about my 2019 word of the year here.
As I felt 2020 drawing near, I again prayed over what my word for the year might be and it was with complete clarity that “renewed mind” continue to surface as the phrase to guide and motivate my coming year - professionally, personally, spiritually, and emotionally. Especially as we reflect on the past decade and move into a new one, I knew being intentional about what to fixate my attention on would be important. That’s what led me to my word(s) of the year.
2020 Phrase of the Year: Renewed Mind
This verse particularly stood out to me from Romans 12:1-2,
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
I know not everyone reading this is a Christian and will see this New Year;s practice through as similar lens. However, I think we can all connect, relate, encourage and come alongside one another in the opportunity to get our minds right.
For many of us, 2010-2019 were the years of establishing our careers, relocating, getting married, and having our first children (and maybe more children thereafter), settling into our lives, roles, and responsibilities as moms. Often amidst all of these transitions, we don’t have, find, or make the time to reflect on what has worked (or didn’t) nor to intentionally gather our thoughts on what’s been holding us back (or worked well to move us forward).
So whether you are coming off an amazing past decade or hard year of postpartum anxiety like I am (where my mind was often my own worst enemy), currently facing loss, heartache, infertility, or another physical battle, or trekking through the often mundane messes and mealtimes of motherhood, I find that the New Year is such a natural time to refocus and reset not just our current vs. desired behaviors, but also the mindset behind them.
Limiting Beliefs
Turning this back to what most of you are here for, I have been thinking a lot about how our mindset as parents often holds our families back from progress in feeding. We can have a feeding advice sent to our inbox (join my newsletter here!), meal plans weekly through an app, groceries delivered, and endless Instagram ideas to show us new fun food ideas,. If we don’t have a renewed mindset about how we feed our families though, does any of this even matter? Or does it just perpetuate the cycle rather than simplify and streamline it?
We will likely keep running up against the same limiting beliefs.
I don’t know what I am doing. Every meal gives me anxiety because while I want my kid to be an adventurous eater, I am unsure I even knows what that means or how to get there.
I don’t even have a healthy relationship with food myself. Who am I to try to train a child to?
Eating healthy is expensive. I am not going to invest in all this healthy food if I don’t know how to cook it or my kids are just going to refuse it.
I can’t keep up with all the stuff I see on Instagram. It’s inspiring and all, but I am already at my max. It just becomes too much.
I must not be a very good mom if I can’t even get my child to eat normal food.
Why bother going to the effort? He won’t eat it anyways.
Others will judge me if they see what my kid eats.
Family meals at home are just not the way the world works anymore.
I missed my window. I am afraid my kids are too old now to make healthy changes. I have so much guilt and feel like I failed them.
I want you to hear me here:
No matter where you are starting this year and this decade out, your family is not too far gone.
Something about this past decade and year that I had to work through the hard way was letting go of my idealistic ways and perfectionistic tendencies. I didn’t want to drop these high expectations of myself and others (including my kids), but in doing so, I have found so much freedom.
That is why in my heart of hearts, I have started to open up more about my struggles with postpartum anxiety, the less than perfect ways my kids eat or at times my husband or I feed, and the real life struggles we work through without answers to (like most recently, my son’s eczema).
I want to be a credible resource for you where you come for trusted advice and relevant tips and tricks. But just as much, I realized over the past year how much it means to me to also be a support system, safe space, and ultimately encourage where ever you are. If you are not in a good head space over how to feed your kids, that burdens my heart on your behalf maybe even more than the nutritional aspect of your child’s diet matters to me. Not because I don’t share your goals in wanting eating competence for your family, but because I know that without your head in the game and your heart here for the change, your mind will continue to hold you and your family back from the health-promoting moves you want to make.
So let’s take 2020 and make it a year and really, a decade, where we don’t just ambitiously aim for high ideals without first acknowledging the truths to what holds us back. Let’s find those communities that allow us to do the hard work, share the less-than-polished head space, and then do the next best thing for us and our families (without fear or comparison). That’s what I truly want this Veggies & Virtue community to be for you.
Changing our Mindset
If you haven’t already, I want you to stop right now and take the time to jot down a few of your limiting beliefs around feed, feeding, and your family’s relationship with food. Then, I want you to look over this process outlined by Changing Minds (below). I encourage you to look at each of the steps in more depth here and work through them for whatever the limiting beliefs you wrote down are.
This outlines how we overcome our limiting beliefs through a series of steps that in doing so, also helped to renew our mind with new beliefs about ourselves, our situations, and ultimately our approach to sustaining health promoting behaviors.
Isolate the belief
Seek the source
Recognize the falsehood
Form empowering beliefs
Start ‘as if’
Create evidence of success
When I asked you all on Instagram what you wanted for feeding in family in 2020, you shared the following answers to,
“A year from now, I want feeding my family to …”
Be organized and healthy
Not stress me out
Be easier and more organized
Be joyful and create togetherness instead of stress and frustration
Not be a fight
Fun again!
Not feel like a chore
Be more healthy and organic
Be filled with more togetherness and try to get hubby on board with eating cleaner
Be about quality time not the food choices
Feel fun and effortless
Be easier and more consistent with Love it, Like it, Learning it
Involve my son more who struggles with smells and eats separately
Be a group effort where my kids are more involved in meal prep and choosing the foods
Be all together! Schedules and timing are so hard
Happy healthy in a place to raise our family up
Be a team effort
Not bring me anxiety
Not be a struggle
Feel more laid back
Be easier and happier experience
To not be an obsession
Be easier and more enjoyable for all of us
Have more variety
Not be so stressful
Bring joy instead of stress and guilt
Be healthful, quick, and all hands on deck
Through all of these and hundreds others shared, we can see a lot of similarities in what each of us hopes for in the future but also likely was challenged by in the past. I loved seeing what so many of you told me you wanted when feeding your family in the coming year, and I am excited to be a part of the process to helping you get there. Each blog post, product, and service I offer in the coming year will be focused on helping you accomplish these overarching aims.
But today, I want you to work on taking the first next step.
For any Frozen II fans out there, you might now have Anna’s “the next right thing” playing in your head. But honestly, let the tune ring true. So often, we can start the new year with lofty ambitions and sharing our “what I want a year from now” ideas with no awareness of the new rhythms such goals require of us.
Consider:
What worked for you last year? What rhythms did you create that propelled your goal for, “I want feeding my family to…”
What didn’t work? Why where these things barriers, and what can you do to work with or around them in the year ahead?
What held you back from achieving your fill in the blank for the above question? What limiting beliefs were replaying in your head every time you tried to go for your goal but maybe gave up?
If you, your husband, or your kids don’t currently eat the way you wish, what realistically needs to change in order for that to happen? Healthy habits take time, LOTS of it, even for a dietitian mom like me. So consider, what mindset shifts do you or your spouse need to make in order to prepare for greater progress or more patience with the process?
With these questions or any others that come to mind, I hope you will take even five minutes after reading this to consider how you need to shift your mindset to transform your behaviors. One step at a time. It might not happen as fast as you dream of but if you can commit to making one small change at a time, could you be one step closer to your new reality? Yes, you absolutely can. I am going to be here to help you along the way.
2020 Next Steps
In 2019, I worked with hundreds of families similar to yours.
Families with moms who are doctors and facing high stress job situations.
Families amidst relocation and everything in boxes and every reason to feel out of sorts and unable to cook at home.
Families with new babies on one hip and a hard to feed toddler on the other.
Families with multiple kids, each with their own feeding temperaments and health histories.
Families with young kids or older ones, protesting early on to eating or years into the food fight.
For those of you who can relate to many of the limiting beliefs that come from family dynamics like those above and yet are ready to pave a fresh path forward in the new year, I want you to join my free Learn to Like it Challenge here. It tees us up to talking more about my Love it, Like it, Learning it Academy – an 8 week group coaching program that will open for enrollment on January 9th! In the Academy, I help families just like yours to work through the step by step blueprint for meal times that promote:
Less stress
Togetherness
Team effort
Joy
Less Anxiety
Healthy Options
Easy Implementation
Variety in what your kids eat
Enjoyment again