Create Your Guiding Principles for the New Year

I don’t like to wait until New Year’s Eve to start thinking about resolutions.

If I don’t put thought into it ahead of time, I can get sucked into making a bunch of unrealistic resolutions that I didn’t create intentionally.

It’s kind of a people-pleasing thing.

All of a sudden, on December 31, everyone is talking about losing weight and making X amount of money, and traveling, and I can feel like I need to go along with those expectations.

Other people’s expectations.

More accurately, my perception of other people’s expectations.

I prefer the idea of thinking of a word or phrase for the year instead of resolutions, but I have come to really appreciate the idea of creating “guiding principles” to help me stay intentional about how I want to show up in the world, in my family, etc.

Our family has been through a long difficult season recently.

It was the kind of thing that caused us to have to articulate some hard boundaries. My husband and I decided to start with guiding principles that would inform those boundaries. Doing so made the boundaries much easier to put into motion, because it kept us connected to our “why.”

I got to thinking that the act of creating guiding principles addresses so many needs of my clients.

Guiding principles help us connect to our values, because our values inform our guiding principles. They give us a layer of security and direction when we waffle in indecision, overthinking, people pleasing, or perfectionism.

Once we catch ourselves lacking a sense of peace about a decision, it’s time to revisit the guiding principles.

The guiding principles help the decision become clear as well as the boundaries that accompany the decision.

It may still be hard to walk it forward, but we can feel solid and authentic in knowing why we are doing (or not doing) something.

How might this play out?

Say your guiding principle is to be present with your family.

Your boss calls and wants you to work overtime.

You think about how the extra money would be nice, but you would miss out on family movie night. You could move family movie night. But deep down, you don’t really want to. But then again, how do you turn the money down? What will your boss think of you if you say no? What will your family think of you if you say yes? Will they even notice? You catch yourself rolling this decision over and over in your gut. You have so many variables floating around that you have steamrolled over your deep-down gut feeling that you want to say no. This might be when you catch yourself overthinking. Usually, if you don’t know what you want to do but you know what everyone else wants you to do, it’s a good sign that it’s time to check your guiding principles.

“I want to be present with my family.” Boom. Done. Family movie night trumps overtime.

I don’t want to simplify this too much – your family may be in a situation where you absolutely need the money that would come from overtime. In that case, though, you might also have another guiding principle of making enough money to pay the bills and save for X, Y, and Z.

When you have two or more guiding principles, you will have to weigh them against each other to make a decision about what you need more. It helps to identify what is most important about that guiding principle and consider the context that you are in. My FACETS model can be helpful in sorting this out.

It might be that the family movie night example has flexibility – you can move that to the next night and still meet the intent of that guiding principle, but get the overtime money to meet the other guiding principle.

You might not make this same decision if it was a family activity that you bought expensive tickets for, or if there was some time-sensitive variable that necessitated that the family time be that specific night. You might not make the same decision if you already worked overtime enough to assure your bills were paid, and savings was well underway for X, Y, and Z.

Guiding principles do not always make decisions easy, but they often lend clarity and purpose.

They cut through a lot of the anxiety that comes with decision making.

They help you stay connected to the values you have identified, so you can live your life like the person you decided ahead of time that you want to be.

They can help you sit with any discomfort that comes along with your decision, because they keep you focused on those deeper values you are working on.

So, how do you identify your guiding principles for the year?

Identify your values.

Take stock of the past year, and maybe even others before.

Make a list of the things that are most important to you, your happiest moments.

It might be that some of your regrets about this past year are shining a spotlight on certain values. If this is the case, acknowledge that with a heaping helping of self-compassion and grace. Often change is the silver lining of our mistakes. Can you ask the critical part of you to be curious and learn about that mistake so you can make a better choice in the future?

You do not need an internal beat-down to shame you into making changes.

Identify which ones are the most important.

Do any of the things you listed jump out as something you want to or need to work on?

Maybe you feel like you have neglected an area in your life.

Maybe you have started working on an area and you want to really focus on that area.

Maybe there is a value listed that represents how you want to be, but you have not ever been able to be that version of yourself.

Identify which ones might be important to others in your life.

Maybe your loved ones have voiced a desire for you to connect more deeply with a certain value. Tread lightly here; you want to make sure you are doing things you want to do, not just things someone else has said they want you to do. That said, there is a time and a place to take the words of your loved ones to heart.

If something like this pops up on your list, you will want to write down all the thoughts and feelings associated with that thing.

Your loved one may be setting a boundary with you and you can see it is worth supporting.

Or, you may live with someone who is overly controlling, and their request is aimed at keeping you dependent on them.

If you are having trouble sorting this one out, it might help to check in with a wise friend, or a counselor who can help you.

Write down a guiding principle that captures each value you identified.

You want to write it in the positive; what do you want to do (not what do you want to stop doing). For example, instead of “stop working so much” you might want to say, “Prioritize my personal life after 5:00 and on weekends” or “Family time is more important than work.” Or “Self-care trumps extra time at work.”

You do not need to be specific because you want this principle to inform multiple decisions. It’s not a goal, it’s a principle that helps define a goal and the multiple decisions it takes to reach a goal.

Loosely consider ways you see yourself applying each guiding principle.

“Loosely” is the key word here. Do not do this with your mind set in stone, or with an expectation that it is possible to forecast every possible application.

Leave space to apply each principle as necessary and give yourself grace by the end of the year if you did not apply that principle to all the things you wrote down. It helps to have this mindset as you are writing it down, so you set it up with lots of flexibility.

Decide which guiding principles make the most sense for right now in your life.

The perfectionist/over-achiever in you might think you have to do them all.

You need to examine this list through the lens of realism.

Think about what is feasible.

I recommend keeping your list to less than five.

Remember, these are broad guidelines, not specific goals.

Devise ways to bring your guiding principles to mind often.

This might look like writing them down where you can see them often.

You might find that a word or phrase will come to mind that captures your guiding principles.

I think back to when I was a kindergarten teacher. The whole school had the guiding principles of “I am respectful, responsible, safe, and prepared.” Pretty much any behavior would fall into one of those categories, and it was an easy catchphrase to teach the kids to help them remember who they needed to be at school. It’s perfectly ok if you do not have a word or phrase. Don’t get stuck on this!

Intentionally revisit your guiding principles often through the year.

(Unless you want them to shake out the way many new year’s resolutions do, forgotten by February.)

Copy and paste to your calendar, or if you are like me and still have a paper calendar, write them in the margin of each month.

Check in with yourself to see how you doing.

Feel free to revise them if necessary.

I am wishing you all the best as you finish up this year and ring in the next.

If your guiding principles are leading you to get some help so you can live a life that fits into your values, please reach out. You may need someone to come alongside you and help you sort out your intentions from people-pleasing behaviors so you can define those guiding principles in the first place.

I am here for it!

Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her downtown Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.