I find resolutions to be mostly useless. We set these grand resolutions: This year I will draw closer to the Lord, this year I will eat less sugar, this year I will be a better mom.

There’s nothing wrong with those ideas, but they don’t actually help us much in establishing real change. Why?

1. A year is a long time. It’s hard to stay focused on 1 thing when the next 12 months could change drastically and we don’t really know what the year will hold anyway.
2. These resolutions are not specific. What does it mean to be a better mom? Is this just a vague feeling or are there specific, actionable steps you can take?
3. A single resolution doesn’t usually bring us any closer to our goals or things we want to achieve.

So what do we do? Jason and I, for many years now, have set themes or words for our year. We think about, pray about, and talk to each other about how our year this year went (listen to the last episode) and then we discuss at length what our hopes and plans are for next year.

So we break down:

1. What didn’t go well this year that we need to change?
2. What worked well this year that we want to bring into the New Year?
3. What are you currently feeling frustrated with?
4. What has been living giving recently?
5. What big goals do you have? (Write a book, plant a garden, etc).

After talking more vaguely about our goals or ideas, we then set a theme for the year. This helps in a few ways:

1. A theme or word for the year allows you to easily keep it in mind all year (even when you have many goals in the woks)
2. It allows you to easily filter new opportunities throughout the year to see if it aligns with your theme for the year. For example, one year my theme was rest. I needed to find more rest and margin in my life and routines. It was a year of scaling back, pulling in, and saying no to a lot of things. After that excellent year, my next year’s theme was community. After pulling back in and creating that margin, I was ready to add things back in, expand my community, dive back into hospitality, while keeping those margin lessons at hand.
3. I have a much easier time setting goals in our 4 areas when I’ve got the theme to guide me. (Personal goals, business goals, family goals, and homeschool goals).

Picking a theme: 

You can pick a word, like rest or community, or you can a theme which is often a sentence or so. The Year of Community, The Year of Rest, The Year of Trying New Things, The Year of Good Routines, The Year of Building Skills, etc.

In the next episode, Jason and I will be doing this in real-time with you. For the first time ever, I think we are going to have a joint theme for our year. Our homeschool and family goals are the same and we build those together. Our business goals are usually 2-3 the same and we each then have 2-3 that are our own. And personal goals are our own. We will be breaking this down for you in the next episode.

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