I have a tradition every New Year’s Eve. I write a letter to myself with my intentions for the next year, seal it up, and don’t look at again until December 31st the following year. It’s a tradition that’s become very important to me because it forces me to reflect on the past year, my current state of being, and what things I would like to nurture or bring into my life the next year.
When I first began doing this a few years ago, I called it a resolutions letter. But I’ve come to realize that the things I write about aren’t quite resolutions, which I also make at the beginning of a new year. My letters are intentions that help me set a focus for the year ahead and should help guide my actions and choices to move me closer to the kind of person I want to be and the kind of life I want to have. For instance, the first year I wrote an intention letter I was coming off an especially difficult year and was very nervous about what the next year would bring. I wrote about how I wanted to focus on bringing calm back into my life and I let that idea of calmness guide me during the next year.
Yesterday when I opened my letter from a year ago I was surprised to find how poorly I did at bringing the things that I had hoped for into my life. In fact, one of my intentions was the opposite of what my life actually looked like this year. The problem wasn’t that it was a bad year. Basically, I wrote my intentions and forgot about them–completely. I had no idea what I was going to be reading when I opened my letter. It doesn’t do a lot of good to write about the things that you want most in your life and then forget about them. The other problem was that I had adopted such a negative attitude this year and felt so stuck in a rut that it was unlikely that I was going to have a great year because my mindset was all wrong.
This year I’m making a commitment to keep my focus on the things I’m hoping for. Hopefully when I look back on my letter I will find that I was able to attract many good things into my life in 2012.
