Happy New Year!
The start of a new year presents us with a clean, new slate and it is a natural time to set new intentions or goals for the coming year. In the past, I too have joined the crowds of people setting New Year’s resolutions with the hopes of bettering myself in the new year. However, in the past three years, I have resisted doing that. Maybe it was because my resolutions never made it past 2 weeks or maybe they didn’t make sense to begin with. By the time February rolled around, I was over it.
I do like the idea of being able to start anew. We can all use a time to reset or a chance to do or be something new. As much as I see the value of starting a new year with new goals, I knew that if I would do that again, I would need to find something that would make me excited about it and not lose interest or steam. So as soon as January 1st rolled around, I started scouring the web to see what everyone was doing regarding their new year’s resolutions in the hopes of finding some new and fresh ideas.
One idea that I really liked was setting an intention instead of a goal for the new year. An intention really serves as an umbrella for a number of new goals and can also keep things fresh by giving us more options on how to go about living out this intention. For example, if your new intention is to take care of your health, you may not just focus on just losing weight, but may also work on being mindful of the food you put in your body, handling your stress and being physically active. When you think of it as an intention, you will have many different opportunities during your day to work on making healthy choices and you won’t get stuck in the rut of having to do one particular behavior for many months to come.
One way that you can set an intention is to choose a Word of the Year for yourself. You can pick one out from a list at the end of this blog, if you would like. Then, with this particular word in mind, live out your daily life in a way to make it come alive for you. For example, if you choose the word FLOURISH, you can think of how you can flourish in your relationships with your family and friends, or how you can help others grow and flourish. There are many ways to flourish on a daily basis!
I would like to encourage you to try this and see where it takes you this year. If the word you are working with gets old or stops having the same meaning to you, find a new one. You can have as many words as you need. Some of them may only last a week or a month before you would need a new one and that’s OK!
Here is the list of words you can choose from:
BE FREE CARE EXPERIENCE LIVE SPEAK FLOURISH GRATITUDE CHOOSE EMBRACE LOVE NURTURE FOCUS LET LIFE FREE GO HERE FEED OVERCOME FIND RISE HEAR PRESENT FIND PERSIST HOLD FLOW PLAY HOPE BLOSSOM STILL SEE LEARN BREATHE FAITH