Idaho Falls life coach explains how to achieve your New Year's resolutions

One month of 2019 has come and gone, which is a major milestone for New Year’s resolutions. Those “new year, new me” goals could be long forgotten at this point, but it’s never too late to start working at them again.

The Idaho Success Center, a local life coaching business, specializes in helping people achieve goals.

The Idaho Success Center is owned and operated by Lois Webb, a part-time landlord and full-time life coach. Webb works mostly with families and children in her cozy, one-person office off of 17th Street in Idaho Falls.

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Webb spoke to the East Idaho Business Journal about advice she gives her clients, which could be useful to Eastern Idahoans working toward something in the new year.

Webb’s coaching strategy is self-discovery, helping clients find answers to immediate issues in their lives, she said. She doesn’t give anybody answers herself.

“They pretty much have it in there â€" they just don’t know how to find it,” Webb said. “I help them ask the right questions.”

Webb begins new client sessions with an exercise meant to encourage positive thinking and avoid “negative self-talk.” It involves looking around her office and picking out all the A’s from the many inspirational messages on the walls. When the client focuses on one letter, everything else â€" all the other letters, words and images â€" moves to the background.

Webb recommends her clients do the same exercise with the challenges they face. When they focus on positive goals, the negatives will move to the background. And focusing on the positives is always more effective than dwelling on the negatives, she said.

Once they find the A’s, or the positive goals, they should put them down on paper, either in writing or in some other visual form, such as cutting out words or pictures from magazines.

For example, a client that wants to lose weight this year should cut out words like “exercise” or “health” and paste them to a vision board, a handy tool for staying focused on their goals that Webb will discuss in more detail later.

Webb said the visual reminders work like magic on the brain. Without even realizing it, the positive self-talk reminders can move people in the direction of their goals.

Webb answered the following questions about how she helps her clients recognize and work toward their goals:

Why do you find it important to focus on the positive goals rather than the negatives?

If we focus on something, that is what we’re going to set our mind out to go and find. If we focus on positives, we’ll find positives.

What specifically do you recommend clients do to keep the positives in mind and achieve their goals?

We do vision boards. With the vision board, you put on the things you would like to have happen in life. Between six to nine goals is plenty for your mind to take in and be able to work on. I don’t suggest more than nine.

If they’re on the board they’re important. The one that comes up the strongest, I have them put that in the center. The board is usually in a tic-tac-toe form.

We also do declarations stating what we would like to see happen in our life and we also do affirmations. “I am, I do, I affirm” to myself that I’m doing these things.

How does a vision board help people achieve their goals? Are there any specific goals that you have achieved using the vision board?

You’re not only saying it you’re also seeing it and hearing it. You’re using all of your senses to work to that goal.

I decided that I wanted to be more involved with other people to help them achieve their goals. I have opened and run my Idaho Success Center. I put on my vision board that I wanted to help other people, especially teenagers, so I went out and found two foreign exchange students to bring into my home.

I really love being a grandma and doing the very best that I can to help my children and my grandchildren find the positives in life. 

People often struggle with getting started on their goals. Do you have any suggestions for people to get started so that they can be confident about keeping their goals?

I work weekly with (my clients). They have to answer to me about what they were able to accomplish that week. It’s nice to have someone to soundboard off them. I help them figure out what they’re going to do for the next week. We fill in the board every week with a new goal and we cross off the ones that were completed.

Reporter Ryan Suppe can be reached at 208-542-6762. Follow him on Twitter: @salsuppe.