Hate New Year’s Resolutions? Try Unpacking Your Year instead.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with goal setting (and especially New Year’s Resolutions).
On one hand, I am very growth oriented. I love learning new things and taking baby steps toward a crazy big goal. I might even describe myself as slightly addicted to the thrill of accomplishment. My “To Do” list has been known to include everything from mundane things like refilling a prescription to big messy projects like build a website for my business (which then gets broken down into a million, smaller steps). I LOVE the satisfaction that comes from drawing a checkmark when each task is done.
On the other hand, I am committed to having more spaciousness and ease in my life. I see how my attachment to accomplishment is intertwined with systems of oppression. (Hi Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Racism!... Friendly reminder that I am enough just as I am and my worth as a human is not measured by my productivity or how well I follow your rules.)
I also really struggle with the daily and moment-to-moment presence and discernment that is required to achieve goals and manage the real-life stuff that is required of a mom, partner, wage-earner, and friend.
Today, for example, I found out the primary benefits provider for my son was going to change which meant research to ensure coverage for some important-and-expensive-and-not-always-covered meds for my son and coordinating schedules for a family spring break trip. They were both important, and time-sensitive (though not truly urgent), but diverted my time and attention from the goal I had set for the day, which was to finalize a training schedule for the first quarter of 2024.
One of my ongoing “life’s work” things is to monitor and manage my tendency to be too attached to goals and outcomes, at the expense of my mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing (which has a trickle-over effect to all areas of my life, including the people I love.)
One of the practices that has grounded and supported me for the last decade in managing that balance is an annual review process that I now call “Unpack Your Year”.
In real life after a trip, I love the ritual of coming home, unpacking, getting laundry done, reminiscing, sorting through souvenirs, looking through photos, and then starting to think about the next adventure.
Every year, we take a trip around the sun. You might not feel like you’ve gone anywhere, but space.com assures me that in one year the Earth travels about 584 million miles (or 940 million kilometers). And, whether you had a big list of goals you worked through or not - a lot has happened.
Why not take a moment to unpack your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual suitcases?!
For many years, I used templates and frameworks for goal setting that others created. Some were better than others, but none of them met all my needs. They were either too structured and overly focussed on outer measures of success or too woo-woo and overly dependent on the use of crystals and vision boards to manifest your desires.
I love both structure and crystals, and couldn’t find a year-end process and future-looking framework that had the right balance for me. So I created my own.
I call it the Unpack Your Year Playbook.
What can you expect?
It’s an easy 3-step process with lots of permission to choose your own adventure to adapt the process to meet your needs. There are also opportunities to connect with sensations in your body, music, and visual imagery, because inspiration and insights can come through many forms.
It’s less about setting specific, outward-facing goals and more about fine-tuning your inner compass to help you discern when you are in or out of alignment.
In the first step, the invitation is to reflect on the year overall. In the playbook, you’ll find questions like:
🌟 What moments were your favourite?
🌟 What are you most grateful for?
🌟 What felt less important than ever?
In the second step, you’ll have an opportunity to imagine and dream about what could be, without worrying about any details or planning. In this section of the playbook, you’ll find questions like:
🌟 What do you daydream about?
🌟 What do you want to open your heart to?
🌟 How do you want to feel this year?
Finally, once you have a sense of what general direction you want to explore, you can think about what you’ll need to pack to take on your next trip around the sun. For this section, you’ll get to respond to prompts like:
🌟 What strengths do you want to leverage this year?
🌟 Who’s coming with you? What qualities do you want in your community?
🌟 What responsibilities do you want to leave behind?
I usually try to set aside some time to complete the playbook around the Winter Solstice. Energetically, December and January feel like a great time to curl up with a blanket and a hot mug of tea.
If you have avoided setting any New Years Resolutions, (or if you’ve already experienced frustration and disenchantment trying to achieve the goals you had in mind), I invite you to Unpack your Year as an alternative.
