In general, I vow not to make “New Year’s Resolutions”; I find them to be laden with high expectations and low follow through which leads to disappointment, depression and shame. I am not; however, anti goal-setting or anti intention-setting. In fact, my strategy has been for the last few years, to choose a word or theme that I deem to be my word or phrase of the impending year.
In order to set an intention for 2018, you must first tread into the land of goals and resolutions. You need to ask yourself several self-inquiry questions:
- What am I proud of accomplishing in 2017?
- What do I regret doing and not doing?
- What do I want people to think about me? What kind of reputation do I want? If people described me in three words, what words would I want them to use?
- What is going well in my family life? What would I like to see improve?
- What is going well for me financially and what would I like to work on?
- How is my self-care? My health? Am I taking care of my body? What is a realistic area that I could improve on?
- How do I feel about my connections in life? Spiritually? Relationships with peers? Family? Co-workers?
- Am I living according to the values that are important to me? What do I feel passionately about?
I would encourage you to journal long and hard on these topics. Research the ones that stand out to you. Ask (trusted) people in your life what they think about your functioning in each area.
Once you have explored what went well last year and what areas you would like to grow in 2018, start looking for commonalities in your answers. Do you see a common theme? If so…that might be something you can boil down into a word/phrase! If not, that’s ok! Triage your answers into your top one or two areas for growth and work to find a commonality between those two. Don’t be afraid to use http://www.thesaurus.com/ to find a word that really speaks to you.
That’s it! That’s the hard part…once you have your word or phrase for 2018, shout it out, what is yours?! I would encourage you to make it public so that your are more likely to achieve results.
My word for 2018 is BUILD.
