What a year, am I right? Honestly, I feel like it flew by. With the amount that happened to us, both personally and professionally, on top of planning a wedding, the year flew by so fast that I don’t think I had time to look both ways before crossing. Last night, when I went to reflect on the year, I had to pull out my planner to remember everything else that happened because even though last year was tough, it was also good to us in many ways and being the optimistic person that I am, I prefer to acknowledge the negative and bask in the positive.
A few highlights from 2018:
- Turning 30 and having a true R&R vacation in Cabo with Chris.
- One of my east coast friends coming to visit me in Portland.
- Going to Create & Cultivate in LA with a girlfriend from Portland.
- Followed by a solo vacation in Ojai and a session with Nicola Behrman as a birthday gift to myself.
- Seeing Hamilton in Portland – yes, it was worth it.
- Spending more quality time with girl friends in San Diego, Charleston, Seattle, New York and Baltimore.
- Getting married.
- Honeymooning in Bali.
- Yoga, boxing, reiki and geeking out at Wellspring in Palm Springs.
- Spending tons of time with family during the holidays.
- Celebrating weddings, engagements and babies that are ours!
At the end of it all, one of the biggest lessons that 2018 left me with was to not take life for granted; to not squander the time that we have here, on this earth, with friends and family, and to relish in the moments that we do have and just be happy.
I’ve got a good feeling about 2019. I don’t know why, but I feel like it’s full of opportunity and excitement. At the beginning of last year, I spent more time that I usually do journaling and setting intentions and goals for the year ahead. I started with a laundry list of everything that, in a perfect world, I wanted to do, experience, change, and accomplish {I know, this doesn’t sound like I’m “setting myself up for success”, but bear with me here}. Then, I would go through and pull out themes and commonalities and identify several overarching intentions.
When I did this last year I ended up with five themes that I created intentions around: mindfulness, relationships, vitality {aka my health and wellness}, work, and personal growth {intellectual and emotional, along with actionable steps that I could take to see my intentions through. I didn’t “achieve” everything, but I’m ok with that. Life happened. To me, intention setting is not stagnant, it’s an ever evolving process that changes throughout the year. After all, we can’t expect to be the same person at the end of the year right? The beauty of the process is simply creating time to reflect and have something to revisit throughout the year.
This year, I did the same exercise, in addition to Nicola Behrman’s “Year End Review”, however, the idea of creating several intentions around my list of goals felt exhausting. Instead, one word kept coming up for me as I read over my desires for 2019 – bold – which then morphed into an overarching intention for the year.
To be courageous enough to trust my intuition and take bold action.
I’m not talking bold in the sense of appearance or personality, although, a little red lipstick never hurt nobody. I’m talking bold in the sense of not half-assing it; really going for it and being fearless – not stupid, intentionally fearless, recognizing my worth, my value, my creativity, and using it. That’s what I mean by bold.
With that, my intentions for 2019 are:
- Do more yoga.
- Actually meditate.
- Get better sleep, and more of it.
- To honor and explore my intuition and spirituality.
- Nurture my relationships and create more time for IRL connection, visiting friends and fun!
- Meet new people and make new friends.
- Create a morning and evening routine.
- Learn more about photography and use my camera more.
- Write, and share, more.
- Continue to read more.
- Declutter, purge and organize!
- Continue to travel and explore locally and internationally.
- Learn French and go to France. {This is the year!}
- Find and see a therapist or intuitive coach.
- Get physically stronger.
- Continue to be compassionate towards myself and others, and let go of perfectionism, perception, and old definitions of success.
- Get outside in nature more.
- Allow for more un-structured time.
- Learn a new skill.
- To not sweat the small stuff. Don’t take life too seriously.
Happy New Year!
Xo
