New Year’s Intentions

It’s January 2nd, 2024.  It’s cold, wet and miserable.  Everyone seems to be posting on social media about their new year resolutions.  And I am sat here wondering just how long they will keep those resolutions going.  I don’t mean to be a kill joy, but it does seem really odd to me that there is an arbitrary date of 1st January where we all expected to turn over a new leaf and become a new, better version of ourselves.

Resolutions are far too easy to make with so many people being swept along on the promise of new and better.  Unfortunately, they are also far too easy to break.  Leaving you feeling wretched, disappointed, embarrassed (especially if you made them public) and annoyed at having failed - just listen to that negative self-talk and your inner critic having a field day!

Let’s face it, it’s wet, dark and cold – some brave souls may have decided that going for a daily run is a good idea, but I am fairly sure that after just a few days of getting soaked through, cold and muddy they will soon lose interest and the running kit will be relegated to the bottom of the wardrobe, there to stay crumpled and unused.  Don’t get me wrong there will be one or two brave and hardy souls who will not give in to the weather and will continue with their plan for fitness and I take my hat off to them - I really do - because I am sure that my running kit - if I had one - would never have even made it out of the wardrobe in the first place!

Becoming a new, better version of yourself takes work, and I mean real hard work.  The kind of hard work that most of us have probably never done before.  It is soul searching work that is required in order for us to find that new version of ourselves.  We can’t simply wake up one day and declare “today is the day I become the new better me” without having previously put in the backbreaking work to achieve it.

For me, I am not going to set resolutions only to break them if not by the end of the first week of January, certainly by the end of the month.  Instead, I am going to set intentions.  And furthermore, I can set intentions at any time, I don’t have to wait for New Year to do so.

So, my intentions are:

• Every day is a new start.  It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday, today is a fresh start.  Each and every day.

• Be present to now, this moment, for we won’t get it again, once it is

• gone it is gone never to return.

These are the intentions that I am taking into 2024, to use in my life on a daily basis.  And I will remind myself that if yesterday was not such a good day, today we get the opportunity of a fresh start just as we will tomorrow and the day after and the day after that too.

No doubt as the year progresses, I will add more intentions however I know for sure that I am not going to sit here and make a long list of resolutions and things that I “must do” or “should do” only to fail to achieve them and then give my inner critic “Naggy Nora” ammunition to fire at me!

One other thing that I am going to do, and again this can be started at any point not just new year, is to each week on a piece of paper write done something good that has happened that week (include the date) and pop it in a jar, then in the future I can empty the jar and spend a delicious hour or two reading and remembering all the fabulous things that have happened over the course of the year.  Perhaps wait to start this from your birthday – think of the wonderful present you would be giving yourself the following year.  This is also a lovely thing to do as a family too with each person adding their weekly highlight.

With love from the snuggly sofa, Michelle x