New Dreams for the New Year and No Resolutions!
I recently visited Victoria, BC and saw beautiful flowers blooming in January. My heart leapt at the site! In my prairie home, the land is encased in snow and cold, but new life is emerging on the west coast of British Columbia.
A winter flower symbolizes new growth and new possibilities. For me, the beautiful flowers offered gifts of beauty, appreciation, hope, healing, joy, and vitality. These flowers sparked my desire to consider the possibilities for the coming year and what I would like to dream into my life.
I am not much for resolutions or setting a long list of goals. I do believe in the power of reflection and intention.
Reflection
The new year is a perfect time to reflect on your past year; consider the highlights, the lowlights, and what you want more or less of in the coming year. This time of reflection encourages you to take a step back and look at what you grew in the garden of your life. It helps you to identify themes and integrate all the different experiences you had. You can see how you have changed over the past year and gain insight into what you want to create. You can cultivate the experiences and feelings you want and weed out those not serving you.
Intention
I prefer an intuitive approach centred around intention rather than making a long list of goals and actions. I want to offer you two ways that may help spark your inspiration and creativity and help you create a vision for 2025.
Vision Board
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the idea of a dream or vision board. All you need to create one is to find a piece of poster board and cut out pictures from magazines that appeal to you. Choose photos or words that you feel drawn to. The images should evoke a feeling for you, like peace, joy, or inspiration. Take your time with this. You may notice that some themes arise. Continue to add to your vision board, and you may start including images or words linked to a category like family, career, home, travel, and so on.
Circles of Possibility
Draw a few circles on paper and write 2025 in the middle. Grouped around the centre are some circles with the following labels.
Gratitude
What are you most grateful for in your life? Who and What do you appreciate? Let the answers flow to the paper without overthinking; just write.
Heart
What brought you the most joy? What made you feel loved?
Inspiration
Who or what has inspired you the most? Do you want to learn something new? Travel? What sparks your imagination?
Nature
What inspiration do you find in the natural world?
Creativity
How do you express your creativity? Cooking, drawing, writing, crafting?
Guiding Light
What is most important to you? What do you value the most?
The answers to these questions will be your guiding light for the coming year. They will point you in a direction that will guide your choices and help you determine your priorities and where you want to spend your time, money, and energy.
Gathering
What resources must you gather to help bring your vision to life?
People? Self-Care?
These two offerings can help you access your feeling heart and thinking mind, igniting your imagination and creativity. You can set an intention for the coming year around what is most important to you and how you want to feel.
Nature can inspire you to create the life you dream of this year.
Circles of Possibility Diagram
