Hand turns dice and changes the expression “old habits” to “new habits”.
Instead of creating new year’s resolutions, I use many of the tools that I have written about to imagine the best possible outcome for the coming year and to examine my habits to see if I need to adjust them to live my imagined story.
The first step in creating a new story for myself is reflecting on the last year. I do this by journaling and allowing myself as much time as I need to process and record what I have learned over the previous year.
The second step is to write a Positive Intention where I describe in past tense the most positive and successful year I could imagine.
The final step is to identify any habit changes I want to make. For this year, I want to:
- Enhance is my ability to Focus and Finish. For me, this means being fully present and attentive to whatever task I am doing. As I imagined what this would look like if I was successful, it would mean that every person I interacted with would feel seen, I would limit my Work in Progress (WIP) to 1, and I would only do activities that couldn’t be effectively delegated to someone else. As I get better at Focusing and Finishing, both my professional and personal life will be transformed.
- Read something spiritual each night before I go to sleep. I will use a checklist that I leave on my nightstand to track my progress. My husband teases me that I get endorphins from checking things off a list, so this method of tracking should help me add this step to my nighttime routine.
- Re-establish my weekly blog. I stopped writing my blog when I took a medical leave last September and gave myself the time I needed to recover. Over the break, I thought long and hard about a process that would help me and my amazing communication team do this more effectively. I hope it works!
This process is based on what I have found to be effective and works for me.
How do you reset for a new year?
I have a very similar process that I started 3 years ago, and I’ve stuck with it ever since. Before I determine what my specific goals are for the new year, I write out my intentions and give my year a theme [for example – growth, learning, confidence, etc]. My intention describes at a high level how I want my days to look, how I want to spend my free time, the people I want to surround myself with, and really what my ideal personal/professional life looks like.. then I’ll determine my goals and what steps I need to take. I love looking over past years planners (where I document all of this) and seeing the changes that I’ve made. This also helps me to stay on track and form strong habits.