So I am too much of a free soul & too moody to follow through on new year resolutions! Can anyone else relate? The ‘losing this much weight’ or ‘reading this many books’, or ‘seeing this many places’ etc kind. It’s amazing if you do that but they mostly don’t work for myself.
And if you’re like me, here’s something to do instead: sitting down around this time of the year to evaluate the previous year and set intentions for the next one (you also don’t have to wait for a new year to do this if you hate the pressure of that! Whatever motivates you, maybe it’s your birthday, maybe it’s Ramadan, however way it works for you!)
I shared about this last new year and have been getting requests to share it again which motivated me to write it down, SO here I am today on the last day of 2018.
Sharing this little exercise I love to do for the new year, inspired by my mom (linking her posts too under this post). Hope it leaves you inspired!
REFLECTING ON THE PREVIOUS YEAR
Before we start looking ahead, I think it’s so important to look back at the previous year. Most of us moms/women are very critical of ourselves and down-play our accomplishments. As we evaluate our previous year, it can help us realize how much we have actually done & achieved!
I have no specific system for this except to write important things that happened in the year in a few different areas. Here are areas I mostly use but you can add as many or as less as you’d like.
MAJOR EVENTS (eg: a move, a baby’s arrival, losing a family member, a new job etc) // SETBACKS (eg: a job-loss, any kind of challenges or upsets that happened) // VACATIONS/TRIPS (all the trips you took from the big to the small ones) // HEALTH (any concerns that came up, scares that happened, new diagnosis etc) // FITNESS (any foods/exercise relating changes you made etc) // BUSINESS / WORK (the biggest projects/accomplishments/roles etc from the year) // HOME (any new updates, projects, DIYs etc that you made happen).
LOOKING AHEAD + SETTING INTENTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR
Once you’ve done with the evaluating (and probably found yourself feeling good about a few things and terrible about others..), you can start setting intentions for the next year! I do this in two areas, my own well being and how that translates to the different roles I have in my life.
BEGIN BY LOOKING AT YOUR OWN WELL BEING & YOUR OWN GROWTH BECAUSE YOU CANNOT TAKE CARE OF THE ONES AROUND YOU IF YOU’RE NOT TAKING CARE OF YOUR OWN SELF.
When we talk about self-care, we have to remember that self-care isn’t just taking the time for a manicure once a few months but so much more. Self care means taking care of ourselves across the different areas – our physical to emotional selves which have very different needs.
So, FIRST here’s what I do. I add intentions for self-care within these different areas : SPIRITUAL (eg: a few ayahs of Quran every morning / Waking up for Fajr / Meditation etc) // EMOTIONAL (eg: Practice mindfulness, seek good conversations, listen more etc) // PHYSICAL (eg: morning walk daily/ keep a water bottle with me/ getting those 10k steps on the step tracker etc) // INTELLECTUAL (eg: take an online class or course, focus on a photography area for my work/business) // SOCIAL (eg: host smaller gatherings more / use slow work months to make plans with friends more) // CREATIVE (eg: start the home projects finally, do personal photo projects etc).
NEXT write down all of your roles you have in life. For example for myself: being a wife / mom / daughter / grand-daughter / sister / sister-in-law / friend / photographer / citizen / muslim / etc and for each of them, write any specific things you want to focus on, your intentions for next year!
I’ll share a few examples so you get an idea / As a wife I have a tendency to nag/taunt too much (I’m sure I have lots of company with that lol) so I might add ‘taunt less’. / As a mom I want to avoid using the phone when my kid comes back from school so I can add that / As a grand-daughter I want to call my nani more / etc. You get the idea, just add intentions for all of your roles. You can write as much but i think it’s best to do between 1-3 big intentions!
ALSO I used a slightly altered version of this to set intentions & goals for my business, but I will do another post to share more about that just because I don’t want to make this longer than it already is! If you’re a creative, a small-business, check back for that!
What do you think? Do you already do a version of this? Are you inspired to start doing this too? I’ll be finding 30 minutes today with my chai to do this. Will you join me too 🙂 ? Comment below or come find me on Instagram and let’s chat!
xo, Nataliya
RESOURCES
Here’s my mom sharing about this same process she uses for weekly goals. / She just shared recently about making annual goals too. You can read that here. /
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