“We live in worlds our questions create.” –David Cooperrider

In the weeks leading up to and after the start of a new year, I tend to do a lot of past year reflecting and current year planning. I do set specific goals that I can check in with and measure and check throughout the year. But what I am finding to be more powerful than just setting goals alone is to also set an intention. I define intention this way: a way of being versus a habit of doing.

Part of this involves choosing a word as I wrote about in my last post, Shalom. And part of this involves the simple but grossly underestimated act of asking questions of myself and then answering them.

On a plane ride to Colombia this past November, I wrote down a list of questions that I answered one by one in the weeks following.

Here’s what they were:

• What do I want today?
• What do I want tomorrow?
• If today and tomorrow don’t match, why?
• What do I believe I deserve?
• How is my heart healing?
• How am I practicing self-care?
• What am I blind to?
• What mistakes of my past am I unwilling to repeat in my present and future?
• What are my must have’s?
• What do I want my 2019 to look like, and how will it differ from 2018?

Now some of those are broader questions that envelope more than just the next 12 months, but that same journal writing session is when Shalom came to me as my word. Something about asking the questions I knew I needed to answer for myself helped usher in the intention I wanted for my year. Having my 2019 word come to me in that way wasn’t intentional (pun intended) but it was energizing.

If you’re trying to figure out what you want out of your year – or maybe your life – I encourage you to write down your own list of questions and then go about answering them in your own time. Here’s to creating the life we want by asking ourselves the right questions.

[Photo: first day in Colombia about 24 hours after I wrote down those questions in my journal. I think I look tired but know I was also energized.]