New Years, for a lot of people, is the time of resolutions. It’s about starting fresh and thinking about goals for the year ahead.  Some of the most popular intentions this year include eating healthier, getting more exercise, or saving more money.

While all these things are things I could probably use more of, I don’t like this kind of goal-setting for the New Year.  Why?  Well, because I have a tendency to jump head-first into things and burn myself out.  If I made it my yearly goal to get more exercise or eat healthier, I would go cannonball into that goal doing everything in my power to make it happen, ignoring everything else in my life (including rest)… until mid-February or so when my body finally screams at me to stop and I veg out on my couch for a week doing nothing but watching Once Upon a Time on Netflix and chowing down a bucket of spicy fried chicken.

As much as I love fried chicken, I figured I’d go a different route this year.  I wanted to choose a word – a single word – that could be my theme for 2018.  When I was just brainstorming, I was thinking it’d be something like “Believe!” because I want to work on believing in myself and my abilities more.  But that word didn’t feel quite right.  I decided to dig deeper and fill out a thought-provoking questionnaire to see what more I could learn about what I really wanted to focus on in 2018.

By the end of the questions, I realized that one of the qualities I admire most in other people is their quirkiness: their brave creativity – their “crazy.” I love stories about people who go completely against the grain and do something that nobody has ever done before. I celebrate that quality in other people! But I as I read back through my answers, I noticed I didn’t write that down as a strength in myself even though I’m basically a human quirk-ball.

So my word for 2018 is “Quirky.”  This year, I want to find my quirk as a strength in myself and give myself more permission to go against the grain and be a little crazy.  Maybe that intention will transform my diet, exercise, or savings… but my bigger goal for this year is to resolve a blind-spot within myself & embrace a piece of me I’ve been hiding for far too long.

Do you have a word, intention, or resolution for this year?  

Wishing you the happiest of years this year! May it be filled with joy and self-discovery.

Blog written with love by the Boulder Psychic Institute