A resolute theme, not a resolution
If there’s one thing we’ve learnt in 2020, it’s that our greatest wealth is our health. Nowadays, it is clear to me that living a 'healthy' life is living my best life and with that in mind, it makes sense for my new year’s resolution for both myself and my business is to have a 'Year of Health'.
First, if you have a spare five minutes, I’d recommend that you watch this short video by CGP Grey. In ‘Your Theme’ he talks about creating themes rather than new year’s resolutions. Unlike specific goal-based resolutions, themes inform decision making on every level, as your choices, big or small, work or home, are supported by incremental steps that align with your overall theme.
What this means, when I apply the theme principal to my new year’s pledge, is that for every decision I make – personally or professionally – I will consider health.
- How a choice I make will affect my emotional health.
- How the decisions we make as a company impact our business health.
- How collectively we make changes to improve our planetary health.
~ Emotional Health – prioritising self-care
Earlier this year, I started a personal project on Instagram. The Magik Space is a space to share openly and support my emotional health, which for me means doing some form of self-care each day such as yoga, fitness, paddle boarding, or even being kind to myself by just resting. I’ve been a bit hit and miss with it, as currently, I’m on a break from social media, which is feeling good for my emotional health right now. Regardless of my posting frequency, though, I know that I need to do something every day to support my own self-care.
Whilst that may seem simple to state, it takes effort to consciously do these things, as my default position is always busy, work-focused, and in a state of 'doing' rather than 'being'. I've found that with a focus on daily self-care, everything feels more positive and falls into place around it when I make it a priority. It’s had a positive impact on my overall health and wellbeing, as well as relationships, family life and in the business. I’ll be keeping this in mind throughout my year of health.
~ Business Health – think ‘anything’s possible’
Business health for me means allowing space to work 'on the business' as well as 'in the business'. It means being able to take a bird’s eye view, to step back and reassess. The term ‘anything's possible’ has come up a lot this year, for good and bad. We didn’t think the pandemic was possible. We certainly hadn't factored that into our well-laid marketing plans for 2020.
Like every other business across the globe, we had to make radical changes this year. But we’re also taking positives from that with us into the next year as we were forced into re-looking at the business and into making difficult, big decisions that we’d been sitting on for a long time.
As an independent family business, we’ve discovered that we can fare better than some of the big corporations. We can adapt and we've learnt a lot about ourselves this year, about our resilience, and that despite being a 40-year-old family business, we can think like a start-up in our team spirit and our decisions. Anything is possible in 2021.
~ Planetary Health – small change, big impact
This challenge of planetary health seems so big. How do we protect and enhance the health of the planet as one person or a small business?
Whilst the pandemic has been and is continuing to be devastating for health and the economy, for me and our business, it’s forced us to think deeper about the impact we’re having on our planet. When we went into the first lockdown, like many people, I scrutinised my purchasing habits. The fact that more of us are asking questions about what we’re buying and the impact the product or the packaging has, means that we will have a positive impact on the health of our planet.
From a business perspective, we’ve shifted a lot of our packaging away from plastic into bio sugar-cane plastics, which has a carbon negative impact. It’s not perfect, there are still implications with end-of-life issues with bioplastics, but it’s a small step. If everyone does something, their little bit, each small step forward together will help longer-term.
Heading into to 2021 with Year of Health in front of mind, I hope that by defining this upfront, it will guide our decision-making throughout the year and put our learnings from 2020 into practice.
Wishing you all a healthier and happier 2021!
Much love,
Kate Bunyan, Founder, Sea Magik