How I Make My New Year’s Resolutions

That title makes it seem like I’ve always done the thing I’m about to tell you about. Actually, this year is the first year I’m setting new year’s intentions rather than resolutions. I already feel much more comfortable than I have in the past 17 years of setting new year goals.

In 2022 I worked with a coach (His name is Dan Mason if you are looking fror one.) and every time we met he would ask what my intention was for our meeting. He also asked what I was grateful for. Just those two questions taught me a lot.

How about intentions instead?

so this year I decided I wasn’t going to make resolutions and I wasn’t going to make goals. I instead decided to set intentions for the year. Setting intentions will allow me to reduce the pressure that I inevitably felt every year. All of the intentions I am setting are improvements in myself and my business. Instead of trying for perfection I will grow into the improvements by the end of the year. What that means is that if I get off track I will just make a course correction. I will get refocused instead of just giving up because I couldn’t be perfect.

I’m excited for this new approach. I have set intentions for my business, my personal life, my home, my finances, my marriage and my spiritual life.

Each intention is up into goals for each quarter to help me focus on the end result. I then broke down each quarterly goal into monthly goals and then further into weekly tasks that can help move me forward. On weeks I do not accomplish the tasks they can be moved forward to the next week with no guilt and no self judgement.

It will feel amazing to get past the negative self talk and the disappointment in myself and then the self sabotage that have seemed so unavoidable until now.

Find a partner

I set these intentions and small goals and I feel eager and confident about them today. But, I am human and I know there will be days where I am feeling discouraged so I set up a way to get back to this feeling again. I did it by finding a partner who I trust. Her name is Meghan and she was part of my coaching pod over the last year. We became friends and confidants for each other. We will be meeting 2 to 4 times per month over Zoom to check in with each other and help each other keep going..

Go for it!

I hope that as you set your goals for 2023 you will be gentle with yourself as you move toward a better you. I also hope that you will also reach for your dreams no matter how far away they seem. Be open to opportunitites that you never expected. Be ready to consider amazing things that come for you even if they don’t come in the way you planned. 2022 was an amazing year for me but, at the beginning of the year, my focus was on meeting new clients through my website. Almost no one came to me that way. The amazing thing was that as soon as I stopped being disappointed that new relationships weren’t coming in the way that I wanted, I recognized all of the exciting things that were happening for me. I hope that that will happen for you too!

Happy New Year! Please let me know in the comments what goals/resolutions/intentions you have set for 2023. If you want to read more about setting new year’s intentions rather than resolutions here is a great article I found about it.

And finally, if you have an intention of improving your wardrobe i would love to help you with that. You can send me an email at beth@bethsmithtextiles.com or check out a few of the things I’ve made by looking around my shop.