I want to take a moment of silence for the New Year’s resolutions that have already bit the dust four days in…(at the bottom, there is a photo of how I spent my first day of 2026…it’s riveting)
Also, it’s Palmer by the way! 😊
I’m always torn about how or if to write something about the new year that doesn’t sound like everything else I and everyone else have already said.
However, I think like most things in life, the concepts themselves that we all generally agree are “good ways to live” are much easier said than done. Be loving to those around you. Your family, your friends, your neighbor, the stranger you meet once while holding the door open. Be generous and selfless. Be intentional about reflecting on your life and taking ownership of putting in the work to become the best version of yourself (FYI, this is an ever evolving process). Really not that complicated 😅
But for some reason, there are still moments when I don’t treat my friends, family, strangers, neighbors, or even myself the way I should. I can get impatient. I can be selfish. I can become complacent in my personal growth, which ultimately impacts both me and the people around me.
Just because we have to continually redirect our aim toward those simple things doesn’t make them any less important. And that’s my case for why the beginning of the year is a great time to spend even a few moments thinking about how we can better align our path with the one that lifts up the best parts of who we can be, and work to put aside the things that get in the way. Not because starting a new year magically makes change easier than any other day, but because there really isn’t another time of year where we collectively emphasize reflection and goal setting in the same way.
I think where we usually go wrong is by trying to pick something we say we will do for 365 days starting January 1st, which as we all know, just isn’t how any of this really works. If you can do that without faltering once, that’s amazing, but save your breath because that’s not me.
When I first started coaching teens five years ago, I used to run a habit exercise where they would pick a few very realistic habits and track their consistency. It was sort of implied they would do them indefinitely, and I would check in on them each call. But with nearly every client, those habit boxes eventually went unchecked, and a sense of failure started to creep in. Habits began to feel daunting and hard to recommit to. And honestly, who can do a habit perfectly forever? It just wasn’t realistic.
What I realized from watching them, and from my own success and failure with habits, is that it can’t be about the forever habit. So I pivoted my approach so that no matter how small, it has to be about forever intentionality. Working to be intentional as many days as you can and not throwing in the towel WHEN you miss a day, a week, or even a month.
We all want to be a Navy Seal or the David Goggins type who can just beat our routine into submission. Great if you can. I used to think that could be me too. But year after year, it wasn’t. And eventually, I accepted that a continual effort to be intentional leads to far more sustainable and meaningful change.
So I started thinking about what simple ways might actually help improve intentionality this year without turning it into an all-or-nothing approach. Here are two things our house is doing, as well as a few of my family therapy clients (I also made two PDFs to guide you if they feel helpful):
- Individual reflection: Identify one to three themes you want to be more present in your life. Try and get each of your family members to join as well!
- Family reflection: Whether your home is a busy house of eight or a quieter house of two, have each person choose 2 or 3 things they would like the family to do more of this year. That could be anything from a family snack night to monthly family emotion inventories (that one might be wishful thinking) 😂
If you click the button below, you’ll get the two PDFs. One includes examples of words, themes, and activities, and the other is meant to be printed and written to capture the responses for both activities, then taped somewhere that the whole family can see.
P.S. Here’s an honest look at how my New Year started. All three of us (my wife, son, and myself) got a stomach bug that went about as bad as you can imagine. We quite literally did nothing besides move from the couch to the bathroom and back…sorry if thats TMI. This photo was us on January 1st, forcing some “outdoor time” at 3 pm…not quite the 5 am workout social media says I should have done to start the year.
