Three Ideas for Turning the Page on 2023. No Resolutions Required.

It’s that time of year: the annual prompt for a refresh. Many of us declare we aren’t going to make a list of resolutions again this year (knowing they will soon be forgotten), but we still tend to make promises quietly to ourselves about how the next year will be different than the one we have just been through.

Fortunately, there is another way to step into a new year. It involves looking back rather than forward. Recently I had the chance to meet with a dozen busy and successful business professionals who Zoomed in to share their year-end reflection practices and rituals. It turns out that many of their activities focus on learning from the year that has passed rather than making commitments for the one to come.

Based on that conversation, I thought I would share three ideas for ringing in the new year that don’t require resolutions.

Select photos that tell a story. Think about all those photos stored on your phone – the ones you took lakeside during the family vacation or when everyone was in the kitchen making dinner or when your parents came to visit. Late in December or early January is just the right time to bring the family together to review those photos and choose the ones that matter the most, the ones that help you tell your collective 2023 story. Next, organize these photos into an album that gets printed so that it is easily accessible for viewing over the years to come. Not only will you have a book that reminds you of what happened in 2023, but you will also have engaged everyone in the process of thinking about how you want to remember the year you have just shared.

End the year with giving. Another participant described a decade long practice rooted in the commitment she and her partner have made to gifting a certain percentage of their income each year to support causes that are deeply important to them. In this process, they set aside time to identify, discuss, and prioritize all the issues that concern them. Then they make fresh – not routine - decisions about how they want to spend these resources, to make the most impact they can with the funds they have available. Recently they have started bringing their children into the conversation by inviting them to weigh in on what causes they care about and what organizations they would like to support. Giving now has become a family activity.

Use your 2023 calendar as a guide for the year to come. Another person who joined the call said her year-end practice was to follow the advice of Tim Ferriss to conduct a year-end review. Ferris explains that at year end he takes out a notepad and creates two columns labeled “positive” and “negative”. Then he looks back on his calendar and recalls “people, activities, or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions” over the past 12 months and makes note of them in the appropriate column. Then, based on these insights, he takes action. For the positive items that ranked most highly, he carves out time on his calendar for them in the new year. “Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar,” he advises. As for the negatives, they go on a “Not to Do List” which he posts prominently to remind him of who – and what - he needs to avoid.

Whether you choose to begin the New Year by reflecting on the past or imagining a different future, the turning of the calendar page to January 1 offers each of us a chance to reset. As Dana Gioia wrote in his evocative poem, “New Year’s,” each January we are given once again “A calendar with every day uncrossed/A field of snow without a single footprint.”

The New Year is a fresh start, an opportunity to make our own mark. May your new year be a happy and healthy one.

Note: Dana Gioia’s poem, “New Year’s”, can be found in 99 Poems, published in 2016 by Graywolf Press.

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