As the year is coming to a close, I’m doing what people around the world do at this time—I’m evaluating where I’m at in my life, and mentally making notes of which direction I want to take it with the rolling out of a new chapter. I tend to not do New Year’s resolutions, though, as they tend to not produce lasting change. Instead of making you feel empowered to have a new beginning, they end up making you feel like you’ve failed when you don’t keep at those goals for longer than a few weeks.
So, in years past I’ve opted for a theme for the upcoming year. I’ve found that a them sets the tone for how I want the year to go, and prompts me to compare my little day-to-day changes to that theme.
Some of my themes in years past have been….
PEACE
MINIMALISM
BALANCE
The purpose of me choosing a theme is that I want something to aim for, but I don’t want the rigidity of specific goals like “lose 20 lbs.”. While I firmly believe in setting specific, obtainable goals, I feel like as I think about the upcoming year as a whole, I want to envision what I want my life to FEEL like in the upcoming year. Then as I am going through the day-to-day motions, I can ask myself if my choices will get me closer to that theme.
So, what is my theme for the upcoming year?
The definition of thrive is “to grow vigorously” or “to progress toward or realize a goal despite or because of circumstances.”
Last year I felt like I was in the trenches. I finished my accounting degree and had my first full year running my business (if you want to read about how I work from home running my own business, read here) so I feel like last year was all about digging deep, establishing grit, and just grinding away. I was in hustle mode where I was toiling away, sowing seeds for the future.
This year I want to take what I established last year and just focus on thriving in the life I worked hard to build. I laid groundwork and planted the seeds to build a life I want. A life where I have flexibility to raise my kids as a single mom while still making a decent living. A life where I can be available to pick my kids up from school, go to all of their activities, snuggle on the couch with them when they’re sick, not worry about how many sick days I have. Now, I want to water those seeds and really see the life I built grow into something where I don’t have to be grinding away so much. I want to spend the year seeing how God will bless all my hard work. I want this to be the year that I THRIVE.
So, here’s to 2024…may it be a year of growing vigorously.
