It’s that time of the year again! The time when you cozy up with pen and paper, a hot cup of your favorite beverage {black coffee without sugar for me, please}, some soft music, and start your year end planning: reflecting on the year gone by and planning for the coming year.
As an avid journaler, I really cannot let this time of the year go by without spending some time in quiet reflection. But I haven’t always been super successful with making new year plans – not by a long stretch! There have been many years when the change of the year was met with a dreary ho-hum, couldn’t care less attitude. Because just idle reflection and day dreams are really not enough to help move you forward in any sort of direction.
Year-end planning: choosing a word of the year
Things really changed for me when I stumbled upon the concept of intentions and choosing a focus word of the year. It wasn’t a dramatic, sudden change. It took me some time to work out how to make a word of the year work for me, and even longer to understand how intentions work. Because from what I’ve seen, people tend to treat intentions as some sort of magic formula – set them, and all your dreams will come true! But guess what?
An intention without action is just a dream. Click To TweetIntention needs to be backed up with action. If you don’t act, all the intentions and affirmations and law of attraction in the world will not help you. This is where a word of the year comes in.
Your word of the year embodies your intention. It encapsulates what you are wanting to call in to your life. And when you can get clear on that, and then give words to the dreams that are rising in your heart, well then – you have some magic at your fingertips!
Year-end planning + reflection: Visioning the year
But how do you really harness this magic? Here’s where journaling – focused journaling – comes in. It took me a long time to really start to ask myself the right questions. But when I did, that’s where the magic happened! And coming back to those questions year after year helped me see the progress I made with not just my intentions, but with being able to expand to and embrace everything that arose during the year.
It’s almost like reflecting on the wins and losses of the current year, spending some thought in choosing a word of the year, and getting clear on how I want to feel in the next year set the stage for me to grow and expand.
This year-end planning works – and I have my workbooks to prove it! Have the EXACT plans I wrote down materialized? Hell, no! I would be lying if I said they did. But the year unfolded in ways that were so much better than I could have imagined, and they unfolded in alignment with my intentions. It wasn’t always easy; I had my challenges. But I did expand and grow and evolve in big and beautiful ways.
This workbook is the system that I’ve created for myself, pulling from numerous resources and from my own older journals. It’s what I use at the end of every year. And this year, I’ve expanded on the prompts and redesigned {and rebranded} the workbook to make it even juicer – we are, after all, entering a new decade! And it’s my gift to you! I hope it serves you as well as it has served me!
To download The Visioning workbook, simply enter your email in the box below.
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Tweet it out: Spend some time with The Visioning Workbook and see the magic unfold! Click To Tweet
Choosing a word of the year has helped me the last few years except this year. Asking the right questions and setting goals and intentions in such a way to accomplish them are definitely the best way to welcome the new year. That reminds me, I have a lot of questions to ask and answer myself. Downloading your year workbook, Shinjini. Thank you. 🙂
I hope you can find some answers and figure a way out of the funk. xx
I did not have a good 2018 with the demons, I had been thinking in the past couple of years I had stashed away, tumbled out. I did not have a word for 2018 nor can I think of any for 2019 at present. I have downloaded your workbook and found out the questions will require serious introspection. Now this is going to take time. Let me see how can I make it work for myself. Thank you, Shinjini, for keeping it free for download.
Take your time with it, Anamika. You don’t have to answer it all in one go. I hope it can help you find some answers and solutions. xx
So true – just setting intentions without a plan is meaningless and thats what most of us (me including) had been doing for a while. So much food for thought in this post Shinjini – thanks for sharing. I am looking forward to using this yearbook and hope it makes a difference for me!
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2018 has been one roller-coaster ride for me personally. But I’m grateful that it is ending in a optimistic note so far. Touché, touché.
It helps to have a word of the year and work in tandem with it. Mine was “nurture” and yes, I did spend a major part of my year nurturing others and myself as well, to some extent.
I would like to keep the aspect of ‘nurturing” intact in my life. I feel I was able to accomplish most of it. But I’m still figuring my WOY. I’m constantly leaning towards “mindfulness’. Let’s see. 🙂 Mindfulness has done wonders to me in the last few months of 2018.
We have to catch up. Long over due. You take care and have a brilliant wrap-up to 2018. 🙂 <3
I am all about reflections and planning this week!
Thanks for the push to find a word & create an intention.
I love how we’re both in sync with this, except that you are so much more focused and productive, Shinjini. Look forward to getting into your workbook. Thank you for this lovely resource.
You’ve very welcome, Corinne! I hope you find it helpful!
Thanks for the lovely workbook Shinjini- looking to work some magic through that in my new year! I am skipping the WOTY this year as somehow it hasnt worked for me, so this workbook will just do the trick then 🙂
Wish you a fabulous year ahead!!
You’re welcome! Hope you find it helpful. And wish you also a great year ahead!
I am so much into visioning and most of them have come true for me.. 2018 has been a very good year except a couple of months I had fallen sick. Expecting 2019 to be great -will get your workbook to start getting in line towards it