New Year's Intentions (not Resolutions!)

It's the first episode of 2023! In this episode, we're looking at the magic of New Year's Intentions, why they are so much better than Resolutions, and how they can help you to beat Burnout LONG TERM in 2023 and beyond.

Read this episode's accompanying blog post to catch up on the journaling prompts from my New Year workshop.

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Transcript

Hello, and Happy New Year! Welcome back to Your Supernova Moment, a Podcast About Burnout - it’s the first episode of 2023.

I want to talk about Intention setting today. Setting intentions for the New Year.

Now just to be clear, I am not talking about Resolutons. New Years Resolutions SUCK. That’s not what this is. Intentions are totally different.

Here’s the thing, around the 27th of December, and all through to now, media, social media, and as a result, our own heads, start to get flooded with all that ‘New Year’ messaging. Weight loss programmes start advertising, gym memberships go through the roof. And you have these two camps - the ones who are like YES, new year new me, let’s do this! And then the other camp, the super edgy ones who are so against the idea of setting any kind of goals around now. It’s like, new year new me? How about new me SAME ME? It’s the same stuff every year, I know exactly who on my social media feed is going to post what. Half of them are posting salads and gym selfies, the other half are posting Ab Fab gifs and drinking stoli boli for breakfast.

It’s all extremes again, isn’t it? And it never lasts. There’s even an official day in the calendar that marks the day we’re all most likely to break our resolutions. It’s Blue Monday, the third Monday of January, which is literally next week. Three weeks! That’s all Resolutions are good for on average, and then they just make us feel bad for ‘failing’ at them.

The thing is, if you've spent the last year, or the last several years, weighed down by stress and anxiety and Burnout, the idea of ‘new year new me’ feels impossible and terrifying, but a whole year of MORE OF THE SAME probably does not sound fun either.



Well have no fear, I'm here with a solution!

I love New Years, but I bloody hate New Years Resolutions and the pressure that all that New Years messaging puts on us. 

I used to sit on New Years Eve or New Years Day and write out this great long list of things I had to do the next year. I had to write a book. Get promoted. Make a certain amount of money. Drop a dress size. Travel to X amount of countries, read X amount of books - I was always over enthusiastic when I wrote these lists and they just ended up getting forgotten about. Sometimes I’d post them on social media and then the next year they’d pop up as a memory and just make me feel shitty because I’d forgotten basically all of them, and I’d failed at most of them. 

New Years Resolutions are just rules and restrictions, unrealistic expectations and pressure.

Intentions are much simpler. I really like to have just one, overarching, simple Intention to come back to again and again through my year. It can be a word, a few words, a short phrase. Something that you can remember.

Intentions are a much kinder self-care practice. An intention is an umbrella, something simple, and feeling based, that helps you to identify goals that you want to set for yourself and keeps you focussed as you work towards achieving those goals.

If you set yourself an intention of ‘balance’, you can use this intention as the starting point to set yourself a handful of goals. Perhaps you want to try leaving work earlier, keeping phone boundaries in the evenings, and making time for restorative activities and fun at the weekends. If you find yourself struggling to stick to those boundaries, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed at your intention. It’s not possible to fail at an intention! It simply acts as a reminder, that helps you to refocus, reflect, and find your way forward.

I love setting my Intentions for the year ahead around this time. I love to reflect on what I’ve loved about the last year, and what I’ve found difficult. I love to write out a list of the things I want more of, and the things I want less of, and use that as a basis to shape my next 365 day journey around the sun. I like to have one overarching Intention that serves to remind me what’s important.

A couple of years ago, my intention was Embodiment. I needed to remember to embody all the lessons I’d learned during my Burnout recovery, and keep doing the things that helped me stay balanced.

This past year, my Intention was ‘Energy’. I was feeling ready to experiment with rebalancing my energy, moving from that ‘Yin’ place of resting and digesting and healing, toward a more ‘Yang’ place of action. What happened was I learned a lot about my energy, and what it’s like now. I went way too hard at the start of the year and wore myself out so I needed to rebalance. Then I got COVID in the summer and that took a massive hit on my energy. I learned a lot about my body’s cycle and the connection that has to my physical energy, and I reconnected with my creative energy. I paid attention to the things that gave me energy, and the things that drained my energy. Did I get to the end of the year with loads of energy, firing on all cylinders and raring to go? No. Actually I was pretty wiped this festive season and I really needed to give myself a break. And that’s okay, because I learned a lot about sustaining my energy last year and I’m just looking forward to putting all that into practice this year. I’m feeling good about what I’ve learned about myself.

This is the power of Intention setting! 

Last weekend, I ran a workshop all around that practice of reflecting, resetting, and Intention Setting. It was a lovely 75 minutes of chat, meditation, movement and journaling - and I’ve had lots of lovely messages from the people who attended saying how much it helped them to start their year with that kind of GENTLE focus, and ease off the pressure.

So if you missed that session, never fear! I’ve popped all of the journal prompts onto my website, just head to the ‘writing’ section and you’ll find them there - and you can get the link direct from the show notes.

These journal questions prompted us to reflect on the good and bad of the year gone by, what we want more of in our lives and what we want less of. It’s not about writing a list of things we need to DO, it’s more about identifying what we NEED. And how we want to feel.

We set our goals FROM our intentions, and the great thing about goals - the thing that makes them different to resolutions as well - is that they are specific. And they aren’t set in stone. You can set yourself a goal, try it out for a couple of weeks, then check in with yourself, adjust the parameters. See what works and what doesn’t, make changes, make it work you. If you have a day or a week where you don’t achieve those goals, you don’t have to go WELP - guess I failed at that for another year! You just come back to your intention, revisit your goals, reshape them, and keep moving forward.

When it comes to goal setting, I really want to encourage you to think about about setting goals rooted in EXPERIENCE, not EXPECTATION. Use this practice of looking back and connecting with a time you felt the way you WANT to feel. Think of real examples, of when you’ve actually done this. Or felt this. Or embodied this. Instead of thinking of it in the abstract, as some magical state of being that might not actually be real - start connecting to your actual real life experience, and build on THAT.

If you do the journal prompts, or even if you just think about what you want your intention to be, what you want more of and what you want less of - and if a lot of what comes up for you is about having more TIME, more BALANCE, more YOU - and less STRESS, you might benefit from coming to talk to me, for free, about Burnout.  If you’re struggling with Burnout right now, I have slots available for 30 minute consultation calls, no obligation to book any coaching. Simply head to my website and book in when I have availability.

I would love to help you EMBODY those intentions for 2023 and beyond. 

SO, INTENTION SETTING. Do the journaling. See what comes up for you. 

I’m also going to pop a BONUS EPISODE up after this one, which is one of my favourite meditation practices to do at this time of year. I find it really helps me to reflect and reset, and it brings up a lot of feeling from which to identify those all important intentions.

You don’t have to do this right now, in this second. Don’t panic that it’s not New Years Day. It’s already over a week into January, and I’m still thinking about resetting and reflecting, and setting those intentions for the year. January is the worst month. It’s so long, it’s so cold and wet and miserable. Don’t force yourself into super strict goals right now, especially if you’re feeling drained and Burned out. Take your time. Ease in. Reflect, and rest. Be kind to yourself. Use this month to identify what you need, what you want, and then settle on that intention - or a few intentions if you can’t pick just one - and move forward.

So, that’s it from me for today. Check out those prompts, check out the meditation bonus episode right after this one, and ease yourself into 2023 with kindness and self compassion.

Bye for now!