I know myself well enough by now to realise that resolutions make me feel both incredibly excited for CHANGE and ACHIEVEMENT at the same time as feeling like I’m just letting myself down when the well intentioned resolutions slip through my fingers.
I haven’t made resolutions for a few years now. I have done ‘one little word’ though which gives a bit of focus to my intention for the time ahead. And some years I’ve made a list of projects I want to complete, big and small. My word this year is PLAN. I’m very bad at adulting, I fear I will always err a little too far on the side of carefree and levity to be taken seriously. I’m also coming to realise that with two adults working and four children to nurture, I need to embrace planning and preparation. Or, more invitingly - ritual. Plan is the word I need most though. It will harness the very practical stuff - we need to start properly meal planning for example. It will make shopping more straight forward, we won’t have as much food waste, we know what we’re doing to stock the chest freezer, our shopping budget will reduce and we won’t need to think about what’s for dinner, we can just get on with cooking it and enjoying it. I think it will give me more scope to cook more than just what’s easy or tried and trusted, but actually wade a little further into all my beautiful cookbooks and be a bit more adventurous.
Plan will also cover the big picture stuff - why did I feel so harried this December, what do I need to change to make this December more festive and less hectic? I’ve always had big lofty dream goals, how about I start achieving some of the career stuff - for that I definitely need to plan my time and plan my actions. See? It’s a fab word.
I recently watched IGTV about goal setting and the advice that I held onto, was this: don’t set goals or plan for an entire year ahead. We all change and grow, so review what you’re working towards every three months. Be open to flexing and changing, to let go of what is no longer working and add something new.
I like it. And it’s exactly what I need, a quarterly check in is far more up my alley.
In this first week of our new year I’m stealing pockets of time to work through some dreaming prompts, to journal quite honestly, to slowly get to the big picture stuff instead of racing ahead to anything that gets my heart pumping too hard with anticipation because of a perceived time limit. So I’m keeping it simple by focusing on some life basics - keeping our water bottles full, eating mindfully, trying to move every day, readreadread, practice patience with the kids, don’t let the washing pile up ;)
Next year though I’m scheming of getting us away for this first week of the year, somewhere near the water where we can go at an extremely slow pace. Properly relax and take some real time out - read, swim, nap, eat, talk, watch the world go by ... Any suggestions?
