I’m making my decree now – 2023 is the year of Shania Twain and getting our shit together.
In the gentle lull that seems to roll in-between the end of the year and the start of a new one, our queen Shania Twain’s hit song, “Up,” began to play in my head 24/7. There was a time during the early months of the pandemic when things felt particularly bleak, in which I would blast this song in the mornings to hype myself up and promise that there would be better days ahead. In the ugly cold of December, the song served as another remind that things can really only be up from here, including temperatures.
Soon, I began playing miscellaneous Shania albums and playlists, and have decided that the upbeat, independent, and kind vibes of Shania’s music is exactly the tune I’d like my 2023 to be in. So there you have it. This is Shania’s year, and this is our year.
As with every new year, I took time to reflect on who I want to be at the end of 2023. That woman is much different than the woman I am today, and I’m excited to meet her.
I know many people think new years suck, and that resolutions or the concept of starting your life over in January is a bunch of crap – but I find it very rejuvenating. Yes, you may not be able to immediately become a brand new person or have a brand new life just because it’s January, but it’s a great reflective point to look at where you are and decide where you want to be. A time to reflect on how you bridge that gap with the 365 days ahead of you.
And really – you could do it any time! Time is an illusion and you can make new goals for yourself whenever you want. But fun fact: January is named after the Roman God of Doors, Janus, who had two faces – one for the past, and one for the future. Seems like a fitting month to do some reflecting and planning. January is also the month of my literal birth, so it’s an all-around solid time of year for me to reflect on life.
In recent years, I’ve been perfecting my new year routine, which I carry with me throughout the year. Let’s take a look at it.
1. I brainstorm.
To kick things off, I get a nice notebook and some pens, and I sit down and think about who I want to be at the end of the year. What do I want to have accomplished? What hobbies do I want to be engaging in regularly? What do I look like? How do I think and what do I believe? What words describe me? What would make me feel happy? What needs to be done? In the words of Lizzo, what is it about damn time for?
I don’t limit myself, and if I find myself thinking “I could never do that,” or if I hesitate to write something down, then I make myself write it down. We don’t fear the discomfort, the unknown, or our own limitations in this stage. We’re brainstorming and open to all possibilities.
2. I make a list.
Next, we take our full list and examine it. Where are the patterns? There are always patterns. For example, this year, I wrote down that I want to learn how to play tennis, I want to continue taking boxing classes, I want to eat better, and I want to feel good in my skin. Those fragments all fit together. I ended up wrapping them up into one goal – read my list of goals below.
Embrace what you’ve written down, and look for the places in which things overlap. Are there standout items that you wrote down? Do some feel more like an umbrella, and others like what’s holding the umbrella together? Find those connections.
3. I set my goals.
In looking at what I’ve written down and the patterns I’ve identified, I pull them together into a list of goals for myself. I tend to think I can take on more than I should attempt to handle, so I often end up with lengthy lists. At this stage, it’s time to decide which goals are the ones we really want to have accomplished by the end of the year. What’s most important to us?
I number my list by the items that are most important. I select the number one goal, that if I didn’t accomplish anything else during the year except for that one, I would still be happy. It goes to the top of the list, and it is my main focus.
Throughout the year, I’ll continue to work on my other goals, but they always play second fiddle to the first goal.
From there, I pare down to my list to what is most important, what is most impactful, what is most achievable, and what is most important to me. Last year, I set 21 goals for myself, and didn’t quite get to all of them, so this year I limited myself to 15 goals.
Not all of them are difficult – it’s okay to set “easy” goals, or goals that seem more achievable – and I encourage it! Getting in some quick wins will encourage you to keep going when your other goals prove to be more difficult.
When writing my goals, I always write them down as if I have already accomplished them – this reinforces the belief that you can really make it happen.
Once I have my list of goals, I write them down again each morning through the rest of the year. This helps me stay focused and to keep my goals fresh in my mind. I keep a notebook with me, and each morning settle in to write down my list, making sure to visualize what it looks and feels like to have accomplished that goal.
4. I turn my goals into SMART goals.
SMART goals are:
S – Specific
M- Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T – Timebound
I crack open a Google Doc, list out my goals, and start creating bullet points to convert my goals into SMART goals and to detail out how I may achieve each goal.
In short, you want to make sure your goal is detailed enough to keep you accountable to what you want to accomplish, you want to make sure you can measure and track your progress on the goal, you want to make sure it’s something you can accomplish, and you want to give yourself a timeline. Let’s get to that.
5. I build a strategic plan for myself.
This is where it really gets Type-A.
Each year, I create a spreadsheet with each of my goals listed in the first column, and each month of the year, broken down by week, along the top of the spreadsheet. Then I begin filling in the spreadsheet with some of the action points from the previous steps. I typically try to make sure that I’m not giving myself a task for every goal each week, as that would get pretty daunting! I work on creating balance as much as I create progress.
This helps me make sure that each week, I’m taking steps to accomplish my goals, and by looking ahead at the whole year, I’m able to keep things balanced so I don’t overwhelm myself by trying to accomplish too much at one time. It’s a solid guide throughout the year to keep me on track, and I look at it each week to make sure I’m where I want to be.
6. I make a Pinterest vision board.
And then I look at it every morning.
This entire process is fun for me, but making the Pinterest board may be the most fun. I look up key terms related to my goal, and add photos to a board that represent that goal, or the feeling associated with the goal. The feeling is just as important as the visual.
Once I feel like I have enough photos, I go in and reorganize my board to my liking. Then, each morning, I pull up my vision board and look through each image. This helps keep my goals at top-of-mind going into the day, and it’s a reminder of why I want to accomplish these goals. I find it to be inspiring and a big motivator to keeping me on track.
So what are my goals this year?
Great question. While I’m choosing to keep some of my goals to myself, here are some of my goals that I’m publicly committed to accomplishing.
I am a published writer.
I write every day. I have so many poems that I hardly know what to do with them. And yet, I’ve kept them mostly to myself. I also have several book projects that I haven’t finished.
When I look at my life, my absolute biggest dream has always been to publish a book – so I’m taking the stance that this year, I will be published in some way, shape, or form. That means starting to organize and polish my writing, and then submitting it.
And I’ve already begun! At the start of this year, I pulled my poetry into a book, and submitted it to a contest for publication. Progress!
I am strong, in the best shape of my life, and I honor my body.
I’ve gone back and forth with a variety of health and fitness routines over the years, and while I’ve found things that have worked for me, I’ve bounced around so many times in the past few years that nothing has stayed consistent. It’s my goal this year to go back to the things that I know work for me, and to stick with them. My focus is to build strength and make choices that honor myself.
I speak fluent German and French, and conversational Lebanese Arabic.
I’ve spoken German since I was fifteen, but I often feel like you wouldn’t know it if you talked with me in German. I don’t get as much practice as I need to, and I want to be at a higher level than I am.
I began learning French at the start of 2022, but after taking a three-month course, I didn’t have any classmates to practice with anymore. I used a few other methods of practicing, but felt like I’d lost a lot of what I know. It’s my goal to get back into it this year, and I’ve actually signed up for another course, in which I’ll be taking one lesson each week.
I’ve wanted to learn Arabic for a long time, and this is the year! My older brother is also looking to learn the language, so we’ve purchased a few books and online courses, and are setting up time to Zoom weekly so we can study together.
I visited Germany and Paris.
Germany has been on my list for many years, and at the end of 2021, I was slated to visit! With the rise of Omicron, however, I had to put a pause on Germany. It’s my hope to un-pause it this year, and let’s be honest – if I’m crossing the pond, I’m going to go back to Paris.
I’m hoping to visit a family member living in Germany, who also happens to be moving in the early summer, so my goal is to visit before the end of spring.
I am a kind stranger and a compassionate helper.
Like so many people, I’ve been in a rut in the past few years where the world has seemed truly bleak. Last year, I decided to spend time volunteering at a few places, and it brought me a lot of joy and made me realize that while we can’t always make radical change across the world, we can sometimes make small changes right where we are. My goal is to help one person each day, and spend dedicated time each month volunteering.
I did a long-distance hike.
This has also been on my list for a long time! There are several long-distance hikes that are on my to-travel last, and this is the year to finally jump into that adventure. I’ve narrowed it down to a few guided multi-day group hikes, which I hope to accomplish near the end of summer or early fall. Stay tuned!
I read 100 books.
We’re leveling up our goals this year. As a recovering English major, I fell off the reading bandwagon after graduating from college, and went from 0 to 50 last year by reading 50 books. I decided that was too easy, and I could easily double my accomplishments this year, so I’ll be reading a whopping 100 books by the end of December. Catch me then for a round up of my favorite books.
I relish my life.
Life has felt hard to truly enjoy in the wake of all that has happened over the past few years, and I’ve been actively trying to find my joy, not just in the large moments like job promotions and fun trips, but in the small, everyday things I used to find joy in, but seem to have lost track of. It feels as if a few of the pandemic years “didn’t count,” but they did. Those years are gone, and now that we’re on the other side of things, I don’t want to let life pass me by. This is the year of taking an extra moment to appreciate the brightness of the moon, the particular tune of the birds singing as they return in the springtime, the feeling of opening a new notebook.
It’s a new year, after all – and it can only go up from here, up where the clouds gonna clear.
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