For 2025, my word is Faith.
“Everything always works out for me.” That’s what my daughter says to herself, multiple times every day.
When you have that fundamental belief in your own well-being, the universe conspires to support you in that belief. Repeating an affirmation trains your reticular activating system to identify any new sensory inputs that are in keeping with that belief. I want that same perspective, which is one of the reasons I am choosing Faith for my word for 2025.
The other reason is, I’ve started going to church again. Living in Christchurch and saying the words Christ and Church so many times every day may have guided my RAS, or it could just be that the Christian faith of my youth has treasures available for the asking, and these treasures are valuable to me.
The reasons for my return to church are complicated, and interesting, and the topic of a different article. Suffice it to say that Faith – faith in what comes next, faith that my prayers will be answered, faith in the perfection of the present moment – Faith is my guiding intention for the year ahead.
New Years Resolutions 2025
Morning sun salutations after shower
I have a whole morning routine, and I can do more or less of it on any given morning. Most mornings, I hit a button on my phone that says ‘Power Playlist’ and I meditate for ten minutes, do 6 minutes of sun salutations, and 4 minutes of calisthenics, to songs that are 10, 6, and 4 minutes long.
I skip the first song if I’m in a rush, and then my morning routine is only 10 minutes instead of 20. But if I skip this playlist regularly, my body isn’t maintaining its maintenance level of strength, balance, and flexibility. I’ve been getting too skinny lately, so I need to be diligent about adding weight and muscle. This habit will ensure I’m staying limber and present in my body.
Every day, without fail, I shower directly after waking. So I’m stacking this habit on an existing habit, using what James Clear calls ‘the habit loop’ – cue, routine, response, reward. I’m making the response of my morning wake-up (take a shower) into the cue for the next habit (do sun salutations).
I feel like if I resolved to do my 20-minute morning routine every morning this year, I might resent it some mornings, or easily forget it. But I am making a resolution to do one specific part of the routine. It’s more likely I’ll decide to do the whole routine instead of just this middle piece, but this feels like a useful hack to increase my adoption of this habit this year.
One page journaling daily
While I’d like to do the 3 pages per day required for Morning Pages, I’m intimidated by a commitment that big, so I’ll commit to 1 page. I appreciate the introspective exercise of journaling to clear out all the random cultch in the mind, shake everything loose, get it out of your head and onto the page. That’s helpful.
But what I need journaling for right now is to rediscover my love of writing, if it’s still there. I need to go looking for it, because I lost it this year.
I had a list of books to write, and major progress on more than one, and I dropped both of those projects and hid in client work. I stopped sending newsletters, I reassessed my brand, and realized the topics I’d chosen were not bringing me passion or joy.
So I’m going to write for myself a while, this year. I’m going to write some things that aren’t to be published, or at least not anytime soon. I’m going to explore a few projects I’ve had in the ‘Someday’ folder for so long I never thought I’d get to do them. I’ll write about my return to church, and what it was like running away from home and never going back, and I’ll just journal about them, and see if my passion for writing is in there somewhere.
If I can get it back, great. If not, I’ll know.
Gym & Sauna weekly
Staying strong and healthy in my body keeps the rest of my life from falling part. I’ve got a good local gym, and a great sauna nearby. I just need to commit to being at each one at least every week.
Trade within guardrails
Whatever those guardrails are, I need to decide the boundaries and trade within them. I lost plenty of money by trading badly last year, and I wasn’t disciplined enough around my execution. I’m disciplined in the rest of my life, I should be disciplined in my trading, too. I got to decide the parameters, but I need to set them and stick to them. Trading casually without firm guardrails has gotten me into loss, every time. I want to make money in the bull market, not lose it to being a crappy trader.
I’m just going to limit myself to these 4 resolutions this year – this feels like enough.
I love that your guiding intention for the year is Faith. There is an aspect of spirituality and optimism in Faith. I have pondered my intention for the upcoming year, and have landed on Courage. I’m not quite sure what guided me to that word, however, I think that the Courage to stand by my principles and convictions may be needed in the year ahead. I, too, have started Morning Pages again. It’s only the 2nd of January, and so far I have managed to write them the past 2 mornings. It will take discipline for this practice to continue. Best wishes for a successful New Year!
2/365 – that’s the progress you need to keep a resolution! I hope you stick with it, Sonja.
Good strong resolutions. I haven’t yet set my own . Succumbing to a temporary virus has caused the delay. Thanks for inspiring me to backtrack and reset for moving forward.
Thanks for sharing your process and resolutions, Caelan! I love the commitment to just one page to make it more doable! I’ve been flirting with those same bite size commitments that often turn into more elaborate ones, but making a small promise to myself really seems to be the key to success.
Smaller commitments are easier to keep! If you can find the tiny habit that’s the critical step, it cascades into a bigger habit that would be daunting to commit to in whole.