Today I sat in a coffee shop with my Tim Ferris inspired 2024 year review all set to focus on 2025, excited about the potential that is currently held within it’s depth. My list of pros and cons already written, ready for an in depth analysis; when I overheard a phrase from a nearby table, ‘It was messy but lovely’ (about Aisling Bea’s This way up, if you’re interested).
However, this struck me a beautiful example of what is needed when we are sitting down to review our year and look towards the new one.
So here are my top tips on how to have a messy but lovely 2025
Embrace the utter messiness of life.
It’s so easy to look towards the new year with a sense of perfection, I mean it is crisp and clean, unadulterated by us yet, what isn’t to love? However, if we are being real, it will get messy. Accepting that life is messy is fundamental to learning self-acceptance. Many new years resolutions are an attempt at self-improvement, a fresh start, a place in which you can focus on personal growth and elevate your life. Nevertheless, they often do not include the messiness that is human nature. I’ll go to the gym three times a week, I’ll quit vaping, I’ll crack my phone habit are all admiral quests, but as is often publicised the potential for failure is significant.
Therefore, I encourage you to set yourself intentions rather than resolutions.
Ask the question how will that resolution look with a bit of messiness thrown in?
- I’ll go to the gym three times a week – except when the kids need to go to ballet, or I’ve had to go away for work, or when I’m just too knackered to face it. If we explore this with the messiness, we can easily see how our resolution (which tend to be fairly rigid and inflexible) can start to fail. Whereas if we build in the messiness and create an intention it offers more scope for incorporating the ups and downs of life, which will increase your chances of staying with it. So, in keeping with our example, the intention may become, working out at the gym on a regular basis. You could set yourself an ideal number of sessions per week, congratulating yourself when you achieve them, but knowing that if you have missed it for two weeks, it may be difficult to restart but you haven’t failed at anything.
- With an intention there is more space for sideway movement, to follow the path wherever it goes. It gives room for expansion, you figure out you absolutely hate the gym, however that spin class that you tried, you loved and that becomes your focus, still sitting within your intention.
Celebrate your positives
By this I mean YOUR positives, which may not be obvious to others. It’s easy when you have something tangible that you can post and boast about, such as completing your first 5k or passing an exam. But often life is made up of the much smaller micro achievements, like not stressing out when you’re ironing basket was overflowing (yes this has been an achievement of mine) or being able to acknowledge that you were able to give yourself permission to rest when you needed it.
I’m not saying here not to celebrate the big things, but let’s get real, sometimes it’s the small things that actually make a lasting impact on our wellbeing and quality of life, leading to improved self-esteem. Offering yourself this compassionate take on your positives can end up being the cornerstone of your wellbeing. So if your list of positives doesn’t include the small stuff, then I encourage you to go make over your 2024 and explore the areas of your life where you excelled at the small stuff.
Reframe your Negatives
Listing all of the things that have gone wrong is so easy, in fact stopping writing can often be the issue. Now the purpose of writing them (according to Tim Ferris) is to explore how to have less of them in your life, which is a strategy that works for some. That said, I find it more useful to reframe your cons. This takes them from a negative, to give them potential to become an act of self-compassion.
For example, the con of ‘I didn’t focus enough on my family’ gets reframed as ‘My family is important to me, what ways can I create space this year to explore how to give them more of me and my attention?’
‘My fitness fell this year as I was unable to start the fitness regime I wanted to’ gets reframed as ‘I was overwhelmed and working out was not a priority‘ and the opportunity to expand it to an intention for 2025 ‘ Are there any simple steps I can to increase my fitness levels’.
My hope in writing this has been to offer an alternative to the usual messages found at this time of year, acknowledging that as humans we are messy, but we also have a lot of loveliness to offer ourselves too. I do now have my list of intentions ready to offer gentle guidance to my upcoming year, knowing that they are flexible and encouraging rather than setting myself up for when I inevitably start to wane in my commitment.