I have just come back from visiting my family in Colombia. It was so amazing to spend time with everyone and also catch up with my close friends.

This photo was at my sister's house while we were all together (My mum, sisters, cousins..) for the Christmas advent prayer.

It is almost the end of the year and I am feeling very accomplished!! I have done so many things for the first time during 2016. Including being the first year in my entire 39.5 years of life that I have actually stuck to doing exercise consistently.

And today I want to share with you all of the lessons learned from achieving a goal that has been on my to do list for the last 20 years of my life.

I am all about planning... however exercising has always been one of those goals I never got to tick. And believe me I have been subscribed to a gym every year for at least 20 years, I have had a personal trainer, have tried doing different sports... you name it.

No, nothing has worked.

But what was different this year?

Here are my recommendations for when you are setting your next goal to make sure you can to, make them happen:

I started thinking what type of exercise I really like doing... after a lot of reflection NOTHING came to my mind. Me and exercise have never been very close friends. But wait, I do love dancing. I had tried in the past joining dancing classes with no results. Anyway I did know that dancing lights me up A LOT.

I asked myself: Am I going to make exercise a must or is this something I feel I should do??.... ohhh it's been a 'should' forever, but this time I felt that I actually wanted (and finally) to do it.

I wrote in my desires: I want to exercise 3 times a week this year. I read that back and felt something was missing. So I dug deeper and realised what I really wanted was: I want a Personal trainer to come home and train me 3 times a week... oh that felt good. Because, let's be realistic Alba if there is not a person knocking on your door you are never going to train. I also added: I want one of those sessions to be dancing. How exciting!!

I sent my request to the universe ... with a little bit of uncertainty, thinking where am I going to find a female personal trainer who comes to my house at 6 am in the mornings, who will dance with me, be good at what she does and offer me a decent price...

However I left that thought behind and focused on how cool would it be if I found her. For the very first time in my life I got excited about the idea of exercising... well as excited as I could be. I left my desire there with a few other ones I had for 2016.

A few weeks after, at one of my weekend workshops I mentioned very briefly my desire about my Personal trainer. At the end of the workshop one of the ladies who attended mentioned she had this Colombian PT she would like to recommend me. Ohhhh!! I thought that is nice. I am going to call her next week.

No I didn't call her, but guess what? She called me the following week. She was super nice. She said we could easily have dancing session a week as she was a Zumba instructor and rumba (Latin dancing sort of dancing) instructor as well.

Backtrack to now December 2016, I can report I have trained 3 times a week every week since I started (except when travelling). And yes I have done my latin dancing one once a week! I have for the first time in my life a decent gym wardrobe (never had gym clothes before) and I can see starting to appear of some sort of muscles in my body ;)

So my wish for you for 2017 is that you connect to the desires that are a must for you. Forget the 'shoulds'. Make a plan that excites you and go for them with everything you have.

Remember 'Your life is yours and you alone are responsible for the quality of it and the results you get'.

To making 2017 the best year ever!

Lots of love

Alba xx