How I Set New Year's Goals (& My 2021 Word of the Year)

 

     Every year, as December rolls around again, I get excited by online content about goals, resolutions, or intentions for the new year. When a favorite blogger announces her word of the year or Verily and Darling magazines publish articles about reflecting on the past year, some giddiness wells up inside me.

     My process for creating a purposeful year begins with these very vague inspirational posts, but then I put the abstract ideals into concrete steps. These are the steps I take between Christmas and New Year's Day to begin January 1 with a clean slate.

1. Reflect on the previous year with journal questions.

    As much as I love freewriting whatever comes to mind, reflecting on the previous year is better done with deep questions that jog one's memory and organize scattered thoughts. Especially in a year full of ups and downs as this one has been, journal questions provide much-needed direction.

     Here are my favorite lists of questions:

• 20+ Questions for a New Year | Tsh Oxenreider (my favorite list, which I've used for several years now)
  
• 5 Questions to Help You Live a Focused 2021 | Verily Mag (a shorter version for completing in one sitting)
  

2. Choose a word of the year.

     Toward the end of the year, I pay attention to the words that stand out to me. Sometimes, I find myself resistant to a word, which indicates how much I need it. Other times, it is the word that I want to characterize my next year. Either way, it is a word that I will spend the next 365 days praying about and learning about.

     In 2020, I found the word surrender before the chaos set in—before I understood how much I needed to let God take full control. In 2021, my word of the year is abundance. I look forward to seeing what God teaches me about the abundant life (John 10:10) and the God of abundance (Eph. 3:20-21).

     I've run the gamut of spiritual to just plain fun words of the year. Previous words of the year include:

• relationship (2015)
• hope (2016)
• presence (2017)
• adventure (2018)
• kingdom (2019)
• surrender (2020)

3. Set your goals.

     Some years I set ten or twelve goals, but last year I started setting seven goals, one in each of the following seven categories suggested by Dave Ramsey:

• career
• educational (even post-college, we should always be looking for opportunities to learn)
• family
• financial
• health
• social
• spiritual

     I accomplished five of my seven goals in 2020, including graduating summa cum laude (educational) and developing a new post-college mentor relationship (social), to name a couple.

     For 2021, I have chosen to set my goals with my word abundance in mind as a theme for each goal. By picturing my life lived abundantly, I am better able to formulate my plans for an overall abundant year in each of the above categories.

~

     These three steps will set you up for success in the new year: reflect on the past, choose an inspirational word, and set realistic goals. The first two will point your year a bit closer to that life of surrender or abundance or whatever else you may choose.

     There is no one right way to set New Year's goals. This is just the formula of one girl who loves the clean slate of January 1 and longs to move forward in life instead of repeating the mistakes of the past.

     What will you accomplish in 2021? It's your oyster.

~Madeline