As we approach the end of the year, many of us are thinking about our goals and plans for the future. Creating a sacred planning ritual can be a powerful way to set your intentions and manifest your goals for the coming year. I first shared my New Years intention-setting process in 2015 and am refreshing and sharing it again because I use the same process and advice every year. I’m so excited to share this tried and true method to craft an extraordinary year.
I love the beginning of a new year. It’s filled with so much potential and excitement. When it comes to setting intentions, it can go two ways. We can quickly list off some random things in our head on the way to the grocery store like lose twenty pounds, stop eating cheese, find a boyfriend, be less stressed, and make 2024 the best year ever! Or we can be intentional about our goal setting, sit down with loved ones and plenty of time and really get to work crafting our year. Which do you think yields better results? No brainer.
Each year I sit down with some of the most successful and creative women I know to craft the next year. I want to walk you through my sacred New Year planning ritual that has yielded huge emotional, spiritual and financial growth in my life so you can have an incredible 2024.
STEP ONE. SET THE SCENE.
Our goals and intentions feel so much more tangible when we can physically create how we want to feel around us. Do you want your year to be filled with magic? Elegance? More nature? Girlfriends? Do you want to let go of perfectionism? How you want to feel should dictate the scene you set. You may want to have a dinner party, go sit under a tree, gather your closest friends at a cafe or sit next to your pile of unfolded laundry and relish in the messiness.
STEP TWO. CELEBRATE YOUR YEAR.
So often, especially when you are an ambitious woman (which I know you are), we skip over the most important part of intention setting, celebrating!! We can’t craft an amazing year unless we learn from our last, the good and the bad. In your journal, answer the following questions:
What were the top three highlights of 2023?
Explain how you grew as a woman over the year.
What were some of the best decisions you made in 2023?
What were the low moments of 2023?
In what ways were you finding yourself hiding, holding back, or putting others first?
STEP THREE. CRAFTING A MEANINGFUL 2024.
Here’s the fun part. Take some time to answer the following questions about the next year. I find it really helpful to be in a group of girlfriends, family, or your partner to share with while you are brainstorming. It helps get the excitement going. I also want you to think about this with every question, “How can I infuse more meaning and intention into each area?”
What do you want to stand for in 2024?
What are your values and core beliefs?
What are you most excited about in 2024?
What’s your number one goal for your relationship with yourself?
What’s your number one goal for your romantic relationship?
What’s your number one goal for your career?
What’s your number one goal for your health and well-being?
How do you want to make your life more sacred?
What are three ways you can be more on purpose this year?
STEP FOUR. IDENTIFY THE OBSTACLES.
2024 will be no different than any other year. There will still be obstacles, fears, and self-doubt. Accomplishing these goals you just wrote about will not be easy, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. I always say, doing XYZ will never be easy, so you might as well do it now! However, you have a much higher chance of accomplishing your goals if you are aware of the obstacles and prepare for them.
What could get in the way of you accomplishing your goals in 2024?
What has been a common thing that has tripped you up over and over in the past?
What are some ways you can move through this obstacle? (examples: talk to my Mom about the pattern I see in my family that I have as well, stop letting my husband call all the shots, get over my fear of failure in therapy, stop waiting to lose twenty pounds to date).
“You have a much higher chance of accomplishing your goals if you are aware of the obstacles and prepare for them.”
STEP FIVE. GET IT ON THE CALENDAR.
When it comes to goal setting I see two main reasons why they don’t come to fruition. 1, You try to add more stuff into your life without taking anything away. 2, You don’t make your new goal a priority by putting real-time towards it. For those reasons, it is so important to create time for your new goals.
Let’s say you have a goal of going for a walk outside every day, I want you to spend some time with your daily calendar to schedule it. Since going for a walk could take 45 minutes, you may have to let something go like doing the dishes or making your kids’ lunch. Maybe you now need to consider getting a housekeeper to come clean more often or you need to ask your partner to make the kids’ lunches instead of you.
Another thing to consider is when your personal goals and career goals could be at odds with each other. Perhaps you have a goal of traveling more, but you only get 10 days of vacation. Or maybe you’ve already committed to going to visit your family three times next year which doesn’t give you space to trek through Nepal. What do you need to negotiate at work or cancel in order to make this a reality?
That’s it! Get on the phone or send an email RIGHT NOW to find a time to gather your girlfriends together to craft 2024.
As for me, I can feel the magnitude of the coming year. I feel poised and ready to step into a whole way of being and being even more fully expressed. In fact, I’m feeling a universal call for all of us to wake up to the ways of intentional living, devotion, and creating a sacred existence. I can’t wait to be on this journey with you. It’s going to be an incredible year!
Love,
Sarah
Why Making Life Sacred is Important
I know you’ve seen all the research about how your beliefs about yourself create your habits which over time create your life, and the only way to shift those beliefs is to understand how our culture and the way you were parented have affected the way you see yourself…
You probably know deep down (though perhaps have never admitted it out loud) that we are spiritual beings who have come here for a very specific purpose and that magic exists all around us. But you often chalk those “moments” up to coincidence, or that intuition is something “other” people have. And you think that having a spiritual practice is “nice to have” for other women who have time, and that’s certainly not you. And there are times when you even judge spiritual women as out of touch with reality, flighty, or even lazy.
But here are a few things you may not know…
Even if you have everything you thought you wanted, it’s ok to want more … In fact, our whole culture is designed to convince women that they should just be satisfied with the status quo when in reality, what is available to you in this lifetime is waaay bigger than what you could have ever imagined possible.
But the world is deliberately set up to convince you (aka brainwash you) to settle for less and to always be focused on the needs of others — which means that you are always available to “them” and that your constant state of exhaustion, overwhelm and low self-esteem means that you’ll never question their power or rock the boat.
And here’s what’s really interesting — connecting to what you really and truly want (you know all those crazy dreams you thought were just fantasies or the ones you thought were too needy or vain to want) is actually the pathway to waking up your soul, turning on the part of you that is magical and finding your power source.
And you may think that spiritual women aren’t grounded in reality, but the truth is that being a spiritual woman IS THE REALITY, and waking up to this truth will completely change your life. When we start to create a life based on what our soul desires and we develop a connection with the “magical world”, instead of from what we’ve been “trained” to want or do, incredible things start to happen.
About Sarah Jenks
Sarah Jenks is an ordained Priestess in the 13 Moon Mystery School after serving as an apprentice for more than a decade. Sarah’s personal sacred practice weaves together the mysteries of Ancient Avalon, Earth-based practices of her Celtic and Germanic ancestry, the Feminine Path of Mary Magdalene, and the Ancient Egyptian practices of Anointing. Sarah thought she was destined to have an “in the box” life after going to a top college, working in advertising, and then creating a successful weight loss company.
One day she walked into her therapist’s office where the remnants of a sacred circle from the night before were strewn on the living room floor. She had a full body “Remembering” of being in ceremony. Since that day she’s been devoted to her own sacred practice and Temple skills and has devoted her life to creating spaces for women to have their own remembering and normalizing the presence of the Sacred Feminine in our culture.