If you’ve been around the block with me a few times, you know every year, instead of coming up with some crazy resolution (or a list of them), I choose to set an intention instead. After all, if January is the month for new goals and life change, then February is the month for failing in them.

However goals are good. Setting our sights on something larger than ourselves, on working towards a new experience or goal is in fact one of the keys to successful living. This quote comes to mind from Proverbs,

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Plain and simple: If we don’t have a plan for where we are going, we aren’t going anywhere.

This is true in fitness, in planning that backpacking trip, and certainly in parenting. Side note: Do you have a plan for how you want your kids to turn out? Cause you should. And how you are living every day should correspond to that vision.

Backpacking in the Uintas, Summer 2014

But sometimes our goals aren’t very realistic. And many times our goals are shallow, looking for temporal change instead of life change. And so I set an intention by choosing a word for my year. Last year was:

Balance

1. an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.
2. a condition in which different elements are equal or in correct proportions. Stable,
Steadiness, equilibrium.

More than any other year, last year was a battle of balance. As our kids get older and I set more crazy goals (um…. Who signed up for an Ironman 70.3?!) the need for balance is becoming necessary. I cannot even joke about it being a need. It is more like an all out war. Something or someone is always vying for my attention! And if I am honest, I should probably just keep “balance” as my word for the next 10-15 years…

Balance is hard. And since I am not yet ready to give up on last year’s word, I let it lead me to this year’s word:

Steady [sted-ee] 

1. firmly placed or fixed; stable in position or equilibrium
2. even or regular in movement
3. firm; unfaltering

Steadiness. Unmovable. Habitual. Constant.

Family time sledding in Salt Lake City, UT

The truth is this next year holds some pretty huge goals for us as a family and for me as a person. And recently I’ve felt overwhelmed by them. Overwhelmed by the endless pursuit of training my kids to be kind and patient and hard workers. Tired by the thought of months of training myself for the longest race I’ve ever attempted. Stressed by all the details that go into schooling and writing and simply living.

But thinking about this isn’t going to help. Neither will worrying about it. I need to let it go and carry on. When you do not know what to do, you do the next good thing. You carry on.

And so I speak these words to you and I speak these words to myself going into 2015:

Steady on friend. Steady on.

Arise. Awake! And stop not until the goal is reached. – Swami Vivekananda

Family photo in-between Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyon, UT.