Friday Five 🖐️ | Rethinking resolutions: Intentional ways to navigate the new year
Crafting your own personal blueprint for 2024
Welcome to Friday Five 🖐️ - Your monthly dose of sunshine in your inbox!
Dear friend,
I hope this message finds you well as we step into the new year. I did my morning pages today, and out of habit, I wrote 2023! Has anyone else done that yet?!
I've been away on a holiday, visiting extended family and losing track of the day of the week. Bliss! ✨ Unfortunately, on the way home I started to feel unwell and I have been in bed most of the day today. But you know what? Maybe this bug is a blessing in disguise. It's given me the chance to hit pause, reflect, and reconsider the way I approach the year ahead.
I read
amazing piece titled “Let’s make 2024 the year of saying no to productivity”, where she quotes and the idea of a January pause:For many years now, I've advocated for January to be an in-between month. Not a beginning time, but a rumination time. Extra room for ideas to marinate, to percolate. Remove the pressure for hitting the "start" button.
I love how Anna expands on it in her latest newsletter:
I try not to say yes to anything big (as much as this is possible) and I try not to hit the “start” button on any new projects. I try to avoid my usual tendency to think of some new thing and immediately start sprinting with it. I try to sit with things a little longer. I try not to overcommit myself.
In other words, it’s not a month of launching, it’s a month of ruminating. A month to hibernate, marinate, percolate.
from “Make January an in between month”
So, instead of diving headfirst into a list of resolutions, I stumbled upon some fantastic alternatives that I wanted to share with you. These approaches focus on customising your own intentional path for 2024.
Enjoy!
Word of the year
Phrase of the year
This year,
has decided to do an entire phrase for the year.An entire phrase has been gifted by those sparks of intuition and those whispers of intention, that kindles hope and lightness and utterly blissful freedom, for me. Not a word, no, for a word is not deep, nor broad, nor all-encompassing enough for 365 days of continuing to drink-in this beautiful, glittering, overwhelming life. A phrase.
My ‘Phrase For The Year’. I need to ‘hold everything lightly’.
from “Not a word of the year”
If you feel a word doesn’t quite captures the bubbling of ideas for 2024, then maybe a phrase would work for you too! Do check out Luisa’s beautiful writing on this.
YearCompass
About a decade ago, a friend introduced me to the Year Compass, and I’ve found myself returning to its gentle annual reflection process again and again.
from “Free Session - Year Compass 2023/2024”
She’s running a free co-working session to work on the booklet for her paid subscribers on Mon, 8 Jan.
More/less list
Last year I came across the more/less list and it struck me as a super easy way, not to resolve to do anything, necessarily, but to remind yourself what matters to you. And what doesn’t.
from “Do you need to reinvent - or should you just cut yourself some slack?”
I recommend popping over and reading her piece. With a subtitle like “Reinvention is the buzz word of 2024 resolution season. But is it just another way of making us feel inadequate?” you know it’s going to be good.
30 day challenges
Perhaps you don’t want to look at the whole year, and instead just want to work on making changes 30 days at a time. Having small goals to tick off each day can help you stay on track and make real shifts in some stubborn habits.
The habit I’m currently trying to shift is going to bed late because I’m watching YouTube or scrolling. I created this printable to help me to turn off technology and ease my way into my bedtime routine and go to bed at a decent hour. Maybe it would be helpful for you too!
✍️ I would love to know what your go-to strategies, personal rituals, or unconventional twists that set the tone for your year ahead.
So many beautiful resources here!! Thank you Mika! Excited to check them out. I am also with this idea of rumination. I’m finding embracing slow living is now the way I want to live. This has always been my way. It’s beyond refreshing that I don’t have to fight it.
I'm so sorry that you were taken ill during the holidays. Hope you have recovered by now. I do agree that sickness is our body's way to tell us we need to pause and rest. It seems that a lot of people I know or know of were/have been sick, including myself, as if there was a collective alarm to warn us how unsustainable our productivity culture is! Thanks for sharing those wonderful resources/articles, some of what I had also read. As you know, from my recent essay, I came up with my word of the year, "Self-Led." It almost became a phrase but I decided to make the action into a word. It's good to know others have come up with the idea of "Phrase of the Year." I might try that in the future! What is yours?