I Don't Do New Year Resolutions

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I always used to think it was silly to have a New Year resolution. I didn't want to make a promise to myself that I would quickly break in two weeks. I always thought, this will be the year I learn x or try to do more of y, but would soon find myself falling right back into old habits and waiting to try again next year. Sounds like a 365-day Lenten failure to me. I haven't replaced my outdoor patio area yet. I hit snooze one too many times and eventually turned off my scheduled alarm altogether. I still have unfinished projects waiting to be completed, and I still rely heavily on my daily cup of coffee. I didn't even mention the gym membership I haven't touched since COVID....

I was reading a blog post about my friend's process for chosing her word of the year and I found it to be oddly inspiring. She said as great as word-generators are for some folks, she likes being more intentional with her selection, taking the last few months of the year to really pray about her word. She reflected on what worked and what didn't throughout the year, and what she would love to try to do better. She then took those lists and searched for a common theme, resulting in her choosing a word that summarized everything she noted.

The importance of her method was to treat it like a process, something she was intentional about. She didn't just willy nilly choose the first word that popped into her head, but rather a word that stemmed from her struggles and successes of the previous year, whether it was obvious at first or not. The process seemed so simple, something even I could get behind. And I did! I made a mental note of my year, and boy howdy was it a year.

When my husband saw me reading the post it turned into a conversation that led to us talking about our own personal goals for 2025. He proposed what someone had shared online as a fill-in-the-blank: This year I will ______________. The blank can be specific, but the goal is to avoid specifics and make the blank be something that you can choose to work toward, easily applicable in any situation. That way if you don't read at least 50 books by the end of the year or you don't complete the Bible in a Year podcast (I still can't get past Leviticus), you won't feel like you failed the year already. This thought process is meant to help you to daily choose growth, even if you don't choose it every time or in the big ways. The little ways count as well, and setbacks show you're still growing!

I know I said I'm not a fan of New Year resolutions, but I did take to heart both the blog post and the prompt. I made my list from the year, and I came up with my phrase for 2025: This year I will focus on improving my health. The older I get the more I recognize the importance of striving to do better, to BE better. What I choose to eat and when are just as crucial to my phrase as whether or not I'm taking quality time to rest. I cannot give what I don't have, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who forgets this most of the time.

Where I need to improve will always look different from year to year, depending on what I'm going through, but making the gradual changes is key. Call me silly, but I now have a New Year's improvement. I want to improve my overall health—physically, mentally, and spiritually—and hopefully even improve my business in the process! I'm still not sure what that will look like but that's the joy of the phrase, I get to discover where God is leading me step by step. I'm ready for my next adventure of growth!

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