February, the 5th… I didn’t see January passing. Time seems to be stretching and accelerating at the same time. It’s a strange feeling and I suppose Covid 19 stop-and-go are not strangers to the situation…
Now January is behind us, we can say the year is really launched and our 2021 goals are well settled.
In my latest post, I talked about the importance to manifest your year. In conclusion, I explained we share our manifest with our children to create our family goals. This is how.
Sharing doesn't mean telling everything
First of all, YearCompass is a very intimate and personal process. If I love sharing it with my husband, I consider its content isn’t for everyone and has to remain in our couple, our kids don’t need to know everything about it. This is our secret lovers garden.
We share with our children the main objectives of our year, the big ideas we can have, in a co-construction way of working.
For doing so, we use a support I really like, the New Year Kit de Big Life Journal.
Our family leaflet
To be honest, we don’t use all the sheets. Since Mr A is 7 years old and doesn’t speak English, we only fill the sheets we find relevant. But now, Mr A likes writing, I think I’m going to create our very own French leaflet for 2022, for him to be able to really own the leaflet. I’ll talk about it in a few months if you are interested !
This year, as usual, we made our family goals during our family meeting, while having a nice and comfy aperitif. Our family goals are created as such.
Being thankful for the past year
We make a quick assessment of the past year. Being grateful and recognizing the good things in our lives is important to keep a positive mindset and acknowledge that, even if 2020 was a peculiar year, there were plenty of little joys in it.
We remember nice memories (pictures can help) and ask Mr A what are the new things he learned, what are the things he has improved and what are the new persons he met or new activities he tried.
Defining our goals
This is when we share our orientations for 2021. We group our goals in 4 categories such as “spending more quality time together” or “taking care of the planet”. I don’t advise you to do more categories because it could be too difficult to achieve.
Then we list 3 concrete actions we want to implement and use as a common thread all year round. It doesn’t need to be specular. For example, we listed we want to go on with the vegetable patches or that Mr A should read a book at night to Little H.
What matters is these goals motivate all the family and they have to be reachable. Otherwise, there is a risk you give them, as so many good New Year resolutions.
Creating our family plan
This is the last step. We usually list our bucket list, all the things we’d like to do in our year such as traveling somewhere, meeting people, reading some books, doing some new activities or learning some new skills. You can also decide on a new family tradition. This year we decided to commit ourselves to a family outing each month.
The leaflet also proposes us to find a word or a motto to define our year. This asks you to be creative and imaginative !
And after ?
After, if Mr A wants to, he can colour the leaflet, which I keep in the family council notebook. I write down on colored sheets the family goals I display on the board for us to watch them daily.
And month after months, we keep track of the goals. We use another leaflet (I love the leaflets !) to answer each months these simple questions :
- My favorite part of the months
- My least favorite part of the months
- What I learned this month
And we check where we are with the goals.
The purpose is not to make you guilty but to be back on track.
This process might seem too academic but it really suits us. Mr A really likes this modus operandi. It gives him some perspectives and some temporal references that motivate him. He really acts on it and feels empowered.
And you, how do you do things at home ?
