Planning and Preparing for A New Year

There’s something exciting and fresh about a new year, isn’t there? I love the week in between Christmas, it’s often slow and relaxed and I love the extra family time and the chance to think and pray over the upcoming new year.

Everyone has a different opinion on how they like to approach a new year, but I thought I would just share how I approach planning and preparing for a new year.

Habits versus goals

Most of the time when people think of a new year, they think about setting new year’s goals or resolutions, often around things like diet and exercise, or how to spend money.

While these goals are good, the problem with resolutions, is that often times we get discouraged when we miss a few days or weeks. Then, because we have no chance of meeting the “goal” we give up all together.

Instead, I like to think of creating new habits. Implementing rhythms and routines that will become a part of my daily life, cultivating life and health in all areas for years to come.

Intentional habits

I like to approach the new year slowly and intentionally, taking extra time to saturate my mind and heart in the word of God and praying about what God would have for me to focus on and grow in for the new year.

As I read and pray, I also like to take time to reflect on the previous year: goals met, answers to prayer, etc and then evaluate how I spent my time, energy, and resources. I think it’s important to consider not only what we want to add to our lives, but maybe what we need to give up.

Of course, habits and rhythms are not just for the new year, and think the beauty of this type of “goal setting” is that it leaves room to pivot throughout the year as we see the need to do so.

I created this rhythms and routines journal/planner that you might find helpful for this part of the process. Basically, just a few specific areas that I like to intentionally evaluate and jot down thoughts for how I need to change.

Once I have evaluated, I like to consider several specific areas of life. I’ll share them here.

Categories to evaluate

Spiritual

The first area I like to consider is my spiritual life. Of course, we should be always evaluating and growing in this area, but a few things you could consider are the following:

Time in the Word – do you have a consistent time in the Word? This is the first place to start. Here’s a few of my favorite simple daily devotionals that will help you dig deeper.
Depth and width of time in the Word – What I mean by this is, some years I feel compelled to just read large portions of Scripture. Other years, I like to dive deeper. I love this plan for reading chronologically through Scripture and these are some of my favorite Bible studies.
Scripture memory – Another discipline to evaluate and consider how we might grow. This book was so good, if you need a little kick in the pants to get started.
Prayer – I always can grow in this area, here’s a few of my favorite resources and this is my favorite prayer journal.

Relationships

For this category, I like to think specifically about my marriage and my children. What are some practical ways that I can love, encourage, and strengthen those relationships?

Are there specific areas of character or weakness in the life of my child that I need to pray about and work on, specifically?

What about my marriage, do we need to have more regular date nights, work on communication, or just have more fun together?

Community

This could include your church, neighborhood, mom’s group, small group, wherever you interact with people, that’s your community.

Pray about who it is you need to reach out to – maybe you need to reach out to another mom and invite her to coffee or a park play date. It could be that you need to step out of your comfort zone and get involved in a small group or ministry at your church.

I have been amazed, as I have started to pray about this area intentionally in the last year, to see how the Lord is opening doors within our community.

Health

This one often gets a lot of attention when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, but I would encourage you to focus more on building healthy habits rather than just starting a diet or workout plan for the sake of it.

Pay attention to how your body feels after doing or eating specific things, notice when you feel your best, and then seek to implement those habits.

Here’s a few simple ideas:

Get 10,000 steps a day. This little pedometer is a great, cost effective way to help you track your steps!
Drink more water everyday. I like to aim for a gallon, but choose a reasonable amount for you and remember, as a general rule, if you feel like you are drinking enough, drink a little more.
Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
Get outside in the sunshine every single day. I love this app for tracking our outside hours.
Read for 15 minutes every day.
Avoid sugar, eat more protein – these should be specific to you and what your body needs.

These are just some simple ideas for healthy habits that would be beneficial for anyone to implement into their life.

Financial

If you’re like me, financial goals might make you cringe. This will likely be a category that you want to talk over with your spouse, but I find it incredibly helpful to set some goals, even if it’s as simple as saving up for a vacation or giving to your church or other charitable organization.

I like to challenge myself to a no spend month every January, an intentional month of no spending. I find it a really helpful reset and opportunity to evaluate my spending and where I need to make adjustments. Grab a free printable tracker here.

Home

This is a fun category. This is where I like to list the projects that I would like to accomplish in my home: planting a garden, repainting a bedroom, hanging curtains – whatever it is, this is where I list it.

I also like to consider what homemaking skills I would like to learn or improve in the coming year. Maybe developing a laundry routine, baking from scratch more, or learning to sew. I find it helpful to jot these things down and refer back to them throughout the year.

Personal

Lastly, but not least, this category is almost a catch-all for the goals and dreams that don’t fit into the other categories.

Do you want to read more this year? Take a class, start a garden, or spend 1,000 hours outside?

This can really include anything you want, but it’s really just an opportunity to dump all your thoughts into one place.

I hope this has been helpful to you as you think and plan for next year. I find it so helpful to have these lists to look back on over the course of the year.

Let me just encourage you to think of goal setting and planing as creating new and healthy habits. There is nothing wrong with setting goals but it can lead to discouragement when we fail to meet those goals.

When you take small steps to create habits, you are creating a foundation for intentional living all year long, which will inevitably help you to achieve your goals.

Don’t forget to download the free rhythms and habits journal here to start jotting down your thoughts.