Hi, friend. How did the holiday season treat you? Grab your favorite beverage and let’s chat.

Happy new year! I hope the year has been kind so far. Today let’s talk about resolutions and intentions. This is the time of year that these things come up. The beginning of a new year is seen by many as a time to turn their lives around, create new habits, set goals to achieve, and of course set those resolutions. I have found that resolutions don’t work well for me. Like so many, by the end of February I have stopped trying and fallen into my old habits.

Ali Edwards has this thing she started years ago called One Little Word. The basic concept is you choose a word to help guide you through the year. I use this as a way to shape what I hope to accomplish. So rather than creating all of these resolutions, I choose my word (or it chooses me) and I let that word guide my intentions and actions for the year. I chose my first word in 2015.

Ali has a class you can purchase, and she does an amazing job of helping you get the most out of your word. I’ve participated in the class a few years, but I fizzled out pretty quickly. I think the reason I fizzled out was how I was working through the lessons. I’ve always been one to jump ahead, at least as much as I could. I would get the monthly prompt, work through it all in one weekend, then not go back to it until the next month. Out of sight out of mind.

This year, I’m trying a different approach, and most likely how I should’ve been doing this all along. This year, I truly feel like my word chose me: PEACE. The past few years have been difficult, and I feel like last year was the last straw that I could take, emotionally, mentally and physically. Something had to change. Emotionally, I was drained. Physically, my health was suffering. Mentally, I just felt like I could not handle one more crisis, whether it was large or small. Also, I was becoming so negative, which is not like me at all. I try to be a glass half full kind of girl.

The way I am approaching my word this year is by taking my time and sitting with each lesson for a while before just jumping in and completing it. We are almost halfway through January, and I still have tasks left to complete for this lesson. I am okay with not being done.

You may be wondering how or why I decided on PEACE. I started by listing out what I want from the new year. I was leaning towards something more along the lines of restore, or faith, or even rebirth, but the more I dug into it, PEACE kept popping up. The end result of my initial list was that I wanted peace from all of my struggles and some calm brought back into my life. Since choosing PEACE for my word, I see it everywhere. It keeps popping up in my social media feeds and even in my devotional.

How do you approach the new year? Do you set resolutions/intentions, choose a word, or just treat it like any other ordinary day? Whichever path you choose for the new year, whether it is setting resolutions or intentions, choosing a word, or maybe none of the above, I hope this year brings you peace.