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Is January a month of gloom or opportunity?

Local life coach encourages a positive outlook on this time of year

  • January can be month of opportunity
  • COVID-19 can cause personal shake ups
  • Look at your connections to combat winter blues

Holiday bill statements, the cold, less sun, piles of snow: January can be a tough month for a lot of people. One local Life Coach wants to turn that notion on its head and instead look at this time of year with more optimism.

“I think January has the potential to be a month of a lot of hope and excitement for people as they make resolutions,” Bron Johnson, a local life and relationship coach, told Kelowna10.

He encourages people to look at the first quarter of the year as an opportunity to make meaningful life changes, and not to consider it a time of “doom and gloom.”

Like last year, this January has a unique challenge of a global pandemic. While recognizing how devastating COVID-19 has been for a lot of people, Johnson said we can find a silver lining.

“If anything positive has come from [COVID-19], it’s been a shake up for all of us. With chaos, comes a call to look at ourselves more fervently,” Johnson said.

“I think it’s caused people to look at themselves and ask those challenging questions, ‘Am I living life the way I want to be?’ Doesn’t matter what subject we’re talking about; health, relationships, career, or our families.”

He began his full-time consulting company in May 2020, so the pandemic has been a constant part of the concerns he’s helped clients with.

To counteract current winter blues, Johnson recommends people take a closer look at their ‘connections.’ He breaks that down into three main areas.

The first is self-connection. This is about getting people to ask themselves if they’re living their life authentically in accordance with their values or for someone else’s. If not, what changes can a person make is an important question to ask.

The second area surrounds connection to people who matter most to an individual.

Johnson noted research by Susan Pinker who, in her book, The Village Effect, said; “Neglecting to keep in close contact with people who are important to us is at least as dangerous as a pack per day cigarette habit, hypertension or obesity.”

The third area of connection is with healthy habits like good diet, exercise, and mindfulness.

Johnson recommends people explore those three areas of connection in their life to see if one being missing is a major contributor to feeling down this season.

Published 2022-01-07 by David Hanson

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