Happy holidays beautiful people! Always a pleasure to contribute to Sweat Equity Magazine. Please enjoy my Gracious Living list of 16 New Year Hacks for an amazing year, and amazing life!

16 New Year Hacks by Grace Van Berkum, R.H.N.

A new year begins with new goals to improve your year and your life. Let every year build on the next on the road to expansion, growth, enlightenment, love, and personal freedom. As long as you keep moving forward every year of your life, you are on the right track. Onwards and upwards! Here’s a list of New Year Hacks for 2016:

1). Eat more superfoods. When you eat super foods fresh from the earth, you will feel super. 

2) Take time to be still. Stillness recharges your body. Stillness leads to awareness which leads to making good decisions.

3). Make new friends. Be vulnerable and meet new people. We all learn from each other and meeting new people provides us with new lessons and information.

4) Take a vacation somewhere you have never been before. Travelling is the best classroom. And the more time you can spend in beautiful nature, the healthier and more peaceful you will be. (Check out a Gracious Living Lifestyle International Retreat HERE!)

5) Journal. Make it a practice to write down your thoughts. Organizing your brain and feelings gives you more clarity and focus.

6) Tell people you love them more. When we give love, we receive love.

7) Cut out sugar. When you cut out sugar, your body, health, hormones, cravings, and energy changes. Basically, when you cut out sugar, your whole life changes.

8). Learn to breathe. Our breath is a free, easy resource to alleviating stress and anxiety. Learn how to use it to improve your life and moods.

9) Help someone regularly. Helping people is an exchange of energy and has a ripple effect. What you give you receive in other ways.

10) Compliment often.  Make people feel special. When you compliment someone on something, they feel good, and then you feel good. Loving words helps to open your heart and create more loving energy all around you. It is like a boomerang. What you put out comes back to you.

11) Learn to love the body part you hate.  This is interesting. You know the body part you dislike. Be greatful for your health and all that you offer the world. Let your own pettiness go. Tell that body part you love it everyday. Learn to love all of you.

12) Sing more. Sing in the shower, the car, your home. Singing creates more energy in the body and gets your mojo flowing. It works. Do it regularly and watch how it elevates your mood.

13) Try harder to remember people’s names. This improves your memory, keeps your brain sharp, and it is better for business and human relations. Your mind is capable of anything so just train it with little name tricks and games.

14) Don’t take things so seriously. Life is short. Learn your lessons and move on. Laugh at yourself more often. No one is perfect! Just keep moving forward.

15) Read more books. Knowledge is power. Watch less tv and use your brain. Your brain, mindset, and life will be affected in positive ways the more you read.

16) Don’t take things personally. The way people treat you is a reflection of themselves and their own perception of reality. People need to validate their own existence and what is true for them. In the end it has nothing to do with you. Just take care of your own responsible, honest, conscious, ethical words and actions. That’s all you can do.

BONUS TIPS: 17) Learn to forgive. This will free up energy that you hold and create more energy for love and positivity in your life. Resentments, blame, and anger have a draining energetic hold on you that weighs you down from moving forward.

18) Visualize your goals. Spend some time every day imagining yourself achieving whatever it is that you currently desire. Focus is key in this exercise, so choose a quiet environment where you won’t be disturbed. Research shows that if the mind can believe it or conceive it, you increase the probability of it happening in real life. Athletes practice visualization techniques all the time to achieve their goals.