3…2…1 Happy New Year!

And just like that, the world feels so open in just the flash of a few seconds. It’s a New Year and all the mistakes of the few past months get to be scribbled out. Time to scroll through your Snap stories, replay your Facebook year in review videos while flooding your Instagram feed with your #bestnine of 2017.

But just like any great moment the energy, excitement, and optimism are short lived and in a few weeks, days or even hours your “Girl, I got this” fire has dwindled to the embers of “yeah, no way I can get this done”. So how can you avoid the new year resolution black hole?  You know that place where planning and production meet up never to be heard from again.

Shift your view.

A new year has always felt like a big red restart button for me. I got to trash and bag the bad stuff from the previous year to begin again. Usually, I spent little time reviewing what really went well and what really went sour. This practice is crucial in truly understanding the lessons and opportunities encountered in the past twelve months. Skipping this personal review cost me. So fresh energy was plugged into new projects, new eating plans, new connections and so on and so on…

What was the result…NOTHING NEW usually.

Once again I’d find myself just where I’d find myself each March, overworked, overwhelmed, financially strapped and feeling stuck.

Until I did this…

I embraced looking forward to the new year as a continuum of growth versus it being an event.

Now every girl loves a big event. We love shopping for the perfect outfit, new lip color, best up-do and prettiest shoes that can endure hours of walking, standing, and dancing. We spend weeks to months prepping. Event day comes we have a blast and just like that in a few days all the glitter is gone and the tag and drag of everyday life is back in full effect.

This is how most of us embrace the new year, like an event. We shop for all sorts of things “to make us better” in celebratory fashion with no plan for implementation that delivers the results we crave.

Event vs Evolution

An event is a thing that happens. Evolution is a process of growth.

Each annual ball drop at midnight could sho’nuff be correlated to me dropping the ball in some area of ministry, business or personal life in months that followed because I had an event mindset. My plans weren’t built to stand the weeks and months of dancing with setbacks, health challenges, and family emergencies. I’d simply poop out.

In 2015, I stopped making resolutions and started choosing a growth goal. This goal built on the successes and failures of the previous year. A goal expressed by just one word. 

Looking forward to each year as movement toward outcomes shift my view and it became my seasonal time of renewal. During this time I do spiritual, personal and financial inventory. This helps me expand on activities that are producing and revisit plans that may be sapping the happy out my soul.

Here’s a quick list that I use for my year in review.

• Celebrate the things that got done
• Identify the projects that brought joy
• Identify the projects that feel heavy
• Nurture new and old connections
• Remove tasks that don’t serve the goal
• Eliminate reckless spending
• Increase charitable giving

I grab an empty journal making sure to write these items out in detail. Once completed I can see a common theme emerge from my outcomes. Then I pray. I ask God to reveal to me what focus I should have looking ahead. That focus becomes my word for the year. Now with that word in both heart and head I identify ways to build on projects that were not completed, do house cleaning on junk that doesn’t serve me and invest in opportunities for relationship building.

Are you tired of making resolutions only to lose your resolve in first 31 days of the new year? Consider shifting from an event perspective to an evolution mindset. Lady, time to look forward!

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