Happy Sunday everyone! I hope that this blog meets you right where you need it to. I realize that this is coming out several weeks into the new year, so it may feel a bit behind schedule, but that is a good depiction of where I'm at in life. There is no time like the present and we're just going to dive in!
Over the years I've found myself more and more resistant to the idea of New Year's resolutions. I would always make the same resolutions that everyone else did. "I will be skinny before summer!", "I will get up early, workout, drink more water than a fish (do fish drink water or just live in it?), meal prep every week, start a side hustle making enough money to go on destination vacations, make more time for self-care, get all of my to-dos done, completely re-organize my house, log my habits in a habit tracker, journal daily, and end the evening with an entire skin care routine, a hot bath, and a meditation session that will put me in the right headspace for the next day." January 1st meant the start of the rest of my life and this time, things would be different.
They never were. Not because any of the things listed were inherently bad. Because they weren't. It was the intention behind them and the intended execution that were lacking severely. Typically this list came to fruition on December 31st, which means that there was zero planning that actually went into it. It was a highly impulsive plan that I believed would just work. It had to! I was starting on January 1st for crying out loud! It was foolproof! After many failed attempts to have success with resolutions, I decided that maybe they just weren't for me. I wasn't the kind of person that could do resolutions like everyone else could. It's not the resolutions, it's me. Right?
Wrong. It wasn't until December 2019 that I realized why I had been wrong all along. And not because I was just biologically unable to carry out a resolution. As I was looking back at our year I realized that we had inadvertently accomplished a lot that we'd hoped to throughout the entire year of 2019. The difference this time was the process through which we came up with our desires for the year had been entirely different. Our heart attitudes for actually accomplishing things weren't based on the date, but rather on our intention behind them.
In December 2018 I had ordered a brand new planner and was eagerly awaiting the delivery. This particular planner had a vision board spread. So many people that had already gotten their planners were posting their vision boards and I had become quite intimidated by the whole idea. When the planner arrived, I looked at the vision board several times and finally decided to just go for it. If it went horribly, I could just scrap the planner idea and wait until next year (dramatic much?). But as I started to doodle on this vision board, I found myself actually enjoying the process. What had started as a last ditch effort, had quickly become something I was really engaging with. I had doodled our little family of three, with an extra little family member with a question mark for a face as we had been praying and trying tirelessly for another baby. I had drawn a house, a second car, a dollar sign, a cross and numerous other little things. Most of which felt like far off dreams, but yet something about them all together on these pages felt comforting to me. As I stared at my board I was overcome by the idea of intentionality and how each of these things had an intention behind them. All of the doodles were interpretations of where our hearts were at that time.
Fast forward back to December 2019, as I was thinking back on the year it struck me that nearly every single thing that had been doodled in that vision board had happened. I want to clarify that I am in no way saying that I believe the key to successful resolutions is to have a vision board. But what I do find to be true is that there was something truly fruitful about setting a tone for the year; a filter to run decisions through, if you will. This method had alleviated my expectations of the outcomes because I was simply mapping out some ideas we'd hoped to have (not expected) in the years to come. Ultimately I was intending to live as intentionally as possible no matter what we were setting out to do. As I began to reminisce, I was overcome with emotion - here's why:
In February 2019, I had been asked to consider joining a dear friend as co-coordinators of our MOPS group. At that time, Jesse and I only had one car. The likelihood of our schedules being able to work in tandem with our almost 3 year old's schedule was highly unlikely. I had told them that I just didn't believe that it was something that I would be able to swing, given our circumstances. In March 2019, on a whim, Jesse and I went to a dealership that we had heard about through our credit union. That same day we had been able to get a second car. Ultimately, this relieved Jesse and I of sharing one car and opened me up to being able to be a coordinator if I wanted to. It was a blessing that we couldn’t have imagined happening just three months prior. Or heck, even 1 month prior.
In June 2019, we had signed a contract on a mobile home and were set to be moving the day after our son turned 3 in July. Again… six months prior I doodled a house on a vision board all the while thinking, “dream big, kid.”
In July 2019, Jesse received a second raise from his job in the same calendar year. This is unheard of in most companies, and we were absolutely stunned at the way in which our financial position was adjusting just 7 months after doodling a dollar sign among the other doodles.
In September 2019, my dear friend and I had taken on co-coordinating for our MOPS group. Because of this change, we decided to switch churches and be all in where I would be leading. I started a MOPS book club and was doing bible study regularly. A faith guidance in ways that I hadn’t quite anticipated just 9 months prior amid vision board doodling.
Four of my doodles, y'all. Four. And not just four little things. Four MASSIVE changes happened within 9 months of my immersion into the vision board. Again, I'm not saying that a doodle will result in success. It was the fact that we had a direction that we wanted to go. We hadn't set out to complete an exact replica of the Mona Lisa within the first three months of the year. We hadn't placed timelines on any of the things that had ended up on that vision board. We just knew that those were things that we had a desire for eventually. Determining what you want to accomplish without the how or why is recipe for disaster. The key was to be intentional in whatever we did throughout the year. Whether it was on the vision board or not, filtering our decisions through the intentionality lens made a huge difference.
By March 2020, I found out that we were finally pregnant with our sweet baby girl. 15 months after doodling a little person with a question mark face, I was looking at 4 positive pregnancy tests in utter disbelief. It may not have all happened within the same year that I doodled in that planner. But that's the point: it doesn't have to.
While there is something truly wonderful about having goals for yourself, there has to be a level of intentionality behind it. Without intention, the whole thing easily becomes derailed and we are often left to feel defeated. I have learned over the years that goals suggest a start and a stop and for me the ultimate joy of all of it has been the process of engaging with intention. If I don't reach the specific weight I set out to reach, I quickly feel defeated and let down. If I'm intentional about my health overall, I find that I am more in tune with how my body functions specifically and I'm much happier. The focus becomes more about the process of eating, caring for, and respecting myself, rather than a set start or stop. While there are always difficulties along the way, filtering through intentionality and seeking to engage with the process has been much more fruitful for me over the years.
Wherever you are in the process, I pray that you are able to give yourself grace, encouragement, and love. Life is hard enough without the added pressure of things that just may not be in the plan right now. A YouTube mama that I love watching, Natalie Bennett, had her mom on for an interview one day and they were discussing gardening. Natalie was reflecting over the time she tried to have a garden and totally failed. Her mom said, "Everything in its season. I can't do it all." That really resonated with me and I think about it often because her words rings true whether it's about gardening, or anything else that we are attempting to accomplish. There is a time for all things and setting expectations of timeline can be debilitating or limiting. Just because you kill the tomatoes this season doesn't mean that you aren't cut out for gardening, it means that the season you were in wasn't conducive to gardening. And just because you aren't able to journal daily doesn't mean that you can never have a journal, it just means that the season you are in doesn't have space for journaling.
Gently, I live you with this - whether you ascribe to creating resolutions, setting specific goals, or just stumbling into the new year unshaven and a little hungover, you have to do what aligns with your current season best. I have learned a lot over the years about what serves my family & I, and while this often changes from season to season, the intention through which I take on the year has been transformative. Engaging with the process, letting myself fall down and having grace & a little humility to get back up again has shifted how I experience each year from start to finish. As I've considered the intention for 2022, I've felt convicted in a specific phrase that I have been filtering all things through thus far. It has been a guiding light for me so far and we are only about a month into the new year. I am eager to share more about this in my next blog!
Until then,
Xx,
Alex
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