My Wicked Awesome Theme for the New Year

My wife asked me the other night: what theme would you give to your aspirations for the New Year?

My answer came without hesitation: millions of good choices.

I want 2017 to be the year I live more intentionally than ever before.

I remember the first time I heard the word “intentional.” I thought it sounded weird. Why not just say deliberate?

But intentional is different. Deliberate (in my mind) implies giving a lot of thought to. Intentional (again in my mind) means making things that are unconsciously chosen conscious, and then deciding on the right course. 

I want to be intentional about as many things in my life as possible. And this means making millions of good choices.

I want to be intentional about as many things in my life as possible. This means making millions of good choices.

This also means being more structured about the day. Making a structure for your life and choosing to abide by it can seem restricting. But I think it is actually freeing.

Living without structure makes you a prisoner to your inclinations and habits. Living with intention allows you to arrange things in order of greatest importance.

It allows you to actually make whatever resolutions you have for the New Year actually happen!

Here are some things I’ve structured (i.e. written down and followed) so far in 2017:

-my bedtime (9pm)
-my wakeup time (5am)
-my prayer times (mental prayer; Bible reading; rosary; Divine Mercy chaplet; examination of conscience; Angelus; family prayers; devotional reading)
-my workout time (6am)
-my meal times
-different aspects of my workday
-my reading and blogging times
-my play with the kids time
-my unwind with the wife time
-my bathing (once a month)
-the last one was a joke (the frequency, not the act itself…)
-etc.

When is your bedtime? Do you have one? If you don't have a set bedtime and you wait for exhaustion, you probably don’t have a real wakeup time either. Is that the best set up?

When is your workout time? If you don’t have one, I would wager that you actually don’t workout as often as you would prefer.

I’ve tried things the other way, making choices on the fly and hoping for the best. Next thing I knew, I was eating more that I should, exercising way less than I should, watching too much TV and all of a sudden learning that I was obese!

Not this year.

If you’ve never made a plan for your life before, writing all these things down may seem a little forced. But I heard recently that a study from Dominican University in California found that people increased their likelihood of accomplishing a goal by 42% just by writing it down.

I did this the other night, and then on my wife’s suggestion I set my schedule as the lock screen on my phone. And you know what happened after that? I got up at 5am the next day. I prayed. I exercised. I read. I accomplished a bunch of my goals.

Another hack that I don’t have a stat for is this: you also increase your likelihood of accomplishing your goal if you tell it to someone else.

What is your theme for the New Year? What are some of your goals? Have you written them down? Have you told anyone?

Share your theme/goals in the thread under this post. 

On behalf of myself and my family I wish you a blessed and happy 2017. May God assist you in making all your good choices this year. 

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