As a friend of mine said, there isn’t any difference between the last day of a year and the first day of another. However, a New Year speaks of a transition mentally, spiritually and emotionally, making it a good time for a fresh start. A New Year makes you feel you can start over and right all the wrongs of the year before, and mentally it gives you this new vibe and ginger that makes you ready to go! The New Year is a great time to set goals and targets and put down a blueprint. Over the last few days, apart from finishing my vision board I also got my children to write down their plans for 2020 so that I can encourage them and help them be accountable.

Drawing blanks? Here are a few general things I want to do more of in the New Year. Hopefully it will inspire you as you write your list of goals to achieve Vision 2020!

1. Be more thankful: This year I want to whine less and be more grateful. This is because staying in a mood of thankfulness and gratitude keeps you joyful and keeps depression at bay. Using my Growth, Gratitude and Goals Journal helps me do this as every night I must sit down and write down one thing I am grateful for. When you learn to count your blessings, you will be amazed at how truly blessed you are!

 

2. Be more prayerful: This is an aspiration year after year, to keep improving the quality and quantity of time I spend talking to my heavenly Father every day.  I want to prevail in the place of prayer, and as I pray to Him in accordance with His Word, I will inevitably get closer to Him and be led by His voice. Like the hymn says, I pray to see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly and follow Him more nearly… day by day.

 

3. Spend more family time: The children are growing fast! One minute you’re rocking a baby in your arms and the next thing that baby is towering over you and ready to leave the nest. As my children grow, I intend to be more intentional about spending more quality time with them.

 

4. Do more chores: Not me o… the children. I need them to learn more about being self-sufficient and taking care of certain things. They made some good progress with this last year and hopefully they will learn even more this year, so I will make a chore chart and do my best to ensure it’s enforced.

 

5. Speak more Igbo: Our languages are an important part of our culture and identity as a people. If you doubt me, just speak “market versions” of Yoruba to the amala seller in your neighborhood buka, or Igbo to the second-hand clothes vendor, and see how it gets you an extra discount. I love Nigerian languages, and apart from ensuring I speak more Igbo to my children, I also want to improve my skills in several indigenous languages. One way I do this is by watching the local movie channels, i.e. African Magic Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa as well as ensuring I speak more of my language daily.

 

6. Be more mindful of what I eat: 2019 was the year of the bulge for me. Before then I always found it easy to keep the weight off, but last year I was careless and for the first time in forever I struggled to fit into my dresses. So this year I am going back to being more mindful of what I put into my mouth, because for the most part weight gain is about what you eat.

 

7. Be more fitness conscious: I started working out again last year, but sadly I had to stop when I hurt myself. This time, I intend to take baby steps and ultimately incorporate exercise into my daily life. Having a walking partner helps accountability, and I will definitely ensure I get one pronto.

 

8. Make more money: I love this one! Even the Bible says that money answereth all things, and boy, do I have some stuff that needs to be answered. This year, I will make sure I am more intentional about marketing my different income streams, and I will invest more so that broke days are far from me. Look at those things you do for free and see how you can monetize them – that’s one thing I will definitely do more of this year, so sorry guys… no more free book consulting.

 

9. Be more intentional: Being deliberate is a virtue, and you achieve more of what you intentionally set out to achieve. Happenstance is very possible and things happen by chance all the time, but even when those chance opportunities do come you must intentionally nurture them to get the best out of them. I will therefore make sure I am more intentional about all I do, whether it’s my spiritual life, family life, my career, my self-development , my social life, etc.

 

10. Get more sleep:  The truth is that life is busy and we never seem to have enough hours in the day, but we must find time to get more rest.  When we have adequate hours of sleep, we wake up refreshed and rejuvenated. As mothers, we especially need to get enough rest as if we don’t, we end up being cranky and irritable and the same goes for every member of the family. To achieve this, I will make sure that I reduce staying awake late into the night unless it’s absolutely necessary.

 

11. Love more: Love is the greatest gift of all, and as children of God we receive so much love from Him that we must be conduits of that love, i.e. we must pass that love around. I intend to be more loving to those around me as well as those I do not even know. I am privileged to be on the boards of several NGOs and intend to also channel this love via these bodies, especially my Literacy Charity LEARN which I just set up. However, charity begins at home so I will start with friends and family as it’s easy to take those around us for granted.

 

12. Spend less time on my phone: I am a media person so a lot of what I do revolves around my phone, but I found I was spending more time than necessary on it (especially on the ‘gram). In order to curb that, I have actually put a timer on my Instagram, removed notifications from some social media apps and stopped going to certain sites. I am now more intentional about the time I spend on social media apps on my phone, and I intend to prune that time down even more and spend that time with family or on getting work done.

So those are a few things I intend to do more of in the New Year. What are the things you and your family need to more of in 2020? Please share!