There’s something deliciously rewarding about the start of a new year. It’s the figurative act of pulling out a fresh, blank notebook, opening it to the first page, and writing whatever we choose.
That said, we’ve always been cautious about New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s Why.
It is very common to set goals that are unrealistic or difficult to measure. We then feel badly when we inevitably fail to stick to it. For many, this means the continuation of a cycle of telling ourselves we are just NOT GOOD at that thing.
We’ve heard countless stories of organizing clients, mostly women, who fall into a pattern of shaming themselves because they failed yet again to stick to a diet or get organized. This has the adverse affect of making it much harder to accomplish anything, because we feel that we have already failed before we even begin.
Word of the Year As a Better Alternative
Rather than choosing a resolution, focus instead on a word for the year. This word can correlate to a general goal that you have. However, you should connect it to a positive outcome rather than a specific goal.
For example, if your goal is to lose weight, change the trajectory of the process by making it about positively improving lifestyle, rather than denying yourself pleasure. In this case the word could be “strong” or “healthy.”
Or perhaps you would like to get organized. Rather than setting a goal to organize your entire home, you could make your word something like “intentional.” This should correlate in your mind to the act of being thoughtful before you purchase new things, and about putting things away where they belong.
The benefit of choosing a word for the year is that it allows us the grace to make mistakes, while being intentional around following a theme in our lives rather than a mandate.
We’ve Organized a List of Word Ideas for 2020
Here are some of our favorite words for 2020. We hope this helps to get you brainstorming about your word for the year!
Do you already have a word for the year picked out? We’d love to hear about it. Please comment below!
If you decide to make an actual resolution rather than a word, check out our article on looking back to last year’s resolutions and examining how it went. It’s a great exercise in the important act of reviewing, refining and editing our lives.
Happy New Year!
Kindness
Love that one.
Appreciative