The new year is here! It’s the best time to be optimistic about what’s to come — if you’re a mom, the new year brings more opportunities to take better hold of your life but the positive change must start with you.

How To Be Your Own Boss: Top tips from a fellow #GirlBoss

Here are seven ways you can help yourself become everything you want to be this 2017:

Tip No. 1: Practice a lot of discipline. Success is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it made for people who aren’t willing to work harder. Routines are good. It trains your body and mind to do certain things at certain times.

There is wisdom in the quote shared by Benjamin Franklin, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Rise early so that you can gather your thoughts together before anybody can distract you.

Tip No. 2: Manage your energy, not your time. It’s about time you unlearned the age old concept of time management. It’s the source of backaches and migraines.

Why? That’s because you can’t really manage time. What you can instead manage is your energy. You can only do so much in a day and the first thing you should do is to accept your own limitations.

For more on energy management, please read: Should you be budgeting your time or your energy? What’s the difference?

Tip No. 3: Work smarter. Get help whenever you can. You don’t have to do all the chores around your home, for instance. Get every member of your household to lend a helping hand. Whether you have bigger kids or smaller kids, they will appreciate that you’ve finally decided to stop being supermom and asked for their help.

Tip No. 4: Learn a new skill. It’s never too early nor too late to learn something new. It could be a new craft that you can eventually turn into an enterprise or, it could be something that you can do for fun.

Tip No. 5: Revisit your personal goals. You’re not really headed anywhere unless you plot and plan out where your ship is sailing course. To better navigate towards your success, you have to make up your mind where you want to go then take it one day at a time from there.

Tip No. 6: Start doing what you’ve always wanted to do. Whether you’re ready to quit your day job or just in it on the sides, at least you’re a step closer to what you’ve always dreamt of doing. However, if you haven’t already figured out what you want, you can use the early part of 2017 to contemplate on it then, take action immediately.

Tip No. 7: Accept that you will never be perfect. Be kinder to yourself. Once I allowed myself to relax at the sight of a little bit of disorder here and there, I felt happier. Many times, that chaos is, in fact, an opportunity for laughter and creating pleasant memories with your family. Learn to ignore the little things and focus on the ones that really matter.

Let’s toast to 2017 and you!

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Margaux Diaz has become her own boss for over a year now, managing her own events company, research and training consultancy, and her new project, thehouseofmargaux.com where the power and passions of the modern woman take centerstage.