Provenance Founder and CEO, Caroll Lee, speaking at BumbleBizz: Women in Wellness.
Ah, the best laid plans. We all make promises to ourselves at the beginning of a new year, optimistically looking forward to a clean slate and a fresh start. I personally love the feeling of starting anew, but this year (after many past New Year’s resolutions made and forgotten), I’m a bit more in tune with how to be successful meeting my goals.
So bring it on 2019! Here are my 3 biggest goals in the new year and what I’m doing to commit to myself and my community, personally and professionally.
Eat Clean
Too many restaurant meals and party food/drink in December means as soon as the New Year hits, I’m boosting my beauty and gut health with the Provenance Detox program. Seven days of plant-based breakfast shakes, lunches, dinners, and snacks that hydrate and cleanse will be just the thing I need to look and feel my best. Positive reinforcement is key here, because once you start doing something that gives you great results, it’s easy to stay motivated to keep it going! I know by the middle of February, I may falter with some of my clean eating goals. And that’s okay, because I have a tool that I can always come back to throughout the year, whether it’s shedding a few pounds or getting ready for a special event.
For my company, I’m taking it a step further. At Provenance, we already know the value of eating clean, and our sole reason for being is to make it easy for busy New Yorkers to eat well. But in 2019, I’m doubling down on providing the absolutely healthiest ingredients around – those that are rich in nutrients, grown and raised organically in local soil, and scientifically proven to help reduce inflammation in our bodies. With gluten-free junk food lining the supermarket shelves, and industrial vegetable oils in rampant use at so-called health food stores and restaurants (no, canola and sunflower oils are not actually healthy!), we know how important it is to provide meals that are not only delicious but packed with ingredients you can trust.
Move and Meditate
I practice yoga regularly. I used to go for the exercise and liked a little side dose of mental reset. Now I go for the mindfulness, with the exercise and sweating as the side benefit. It’s a moving meditation for me. I feel like it's one of the few times I can truly clear my brain, as I challenge myself to stretch a little further, hold a pose a little longer.
I approach the moves from a mindset of enjoying the challenge, knowing I might lose my balance or fall over. Nailing a move and standing still as a statue is not my goal. It’s the movement and flow that I crave.
I often think if I could face all of life’s challenges the way I approach the ones on the mat, what would my life look like? How many times do we talk ourselves out of doing something that feels hard or not in our wheelhouse? Going upside down in yoga is scary to me, but I still always try even if it’s just kicking my feet off the ground and catching air for a fraction of a second. Can I say the same thing about other challenges around which I have fear?
As an entrepreneur thinking of mindfulness, I ask myself, “How can I best serve others?” Because we’ve been a bit more thoughtful (or mindful) about how we do business at Provenance, we’ve been a little slower in our growth than we could have been. We let a couple opportunities pass by that would have required us to scale up very quickly, but which I felt would compromise the quality of our meals. Being mindful has perhaps resulted in slower, more organic growth. But I believe that in the end, that strategy was the right one to take in order for us to be true to our values. In 2019, my goal is to bring that mindfulness to whatever challenges I face in work and in life and continue to grow Provenance, sustainably and responsibly.
Take Care of your Mother
Is anyone else seriously despairing about the state of our environment? The plastics plague is taking a serious toll on the health of our planet, and the latest science won’t cheer anyone up. We all need to double down on sustainability, and we need to do it right now. While I continue to do my part personally to reduce waste by carrying my own water bottle, refusing plastic bags and other single-use plastics, and composting my family’s food scraps, I know the greatest impact I can have is with my business. At Provenance, our “do no harm” commitment means we source organic, local and pasture-raised ingredients and use packaging that is fully compostable and recyclable. I’m also proud to announce that in 2019, we will be running all our electricity on solar power via the Power Market’s community solar projects. (NY residents can also sign up for solar easily and quickly online.)
New Year’s resolutions shouldn’t be a setup for failure. They’re an opportunity to delve a little deeper into your wants, needs, goals, and actions. To me, 2019 is the year I really live my values, in order to serve my true self, to serve my company, and to serve my community. As a mission-driven person by nature, I know that framing my resolutions this way will help me be more successful in reaching my goals.