Feel-good Family Toolkit: what are your traditions?
Welcome to 2025! While everyone declares their New Year’s Resolutions on social media, in staff rooms, or even in private- there is another way to approach goal setting that can have a wonderful impact. Back in 2010, a friend of mine told me about this new thing, which she called a “One Word Theme” for the year. “It’s instead of making a New Year’s Resolution,” she said. “Everyone knows we blow the diet or gym membership by the end of January, February at the latest.” This was the start of a new tradition that has shaped my New Year = New Beginning philosophy.
It involves choosing a single word that will become a theme or guiding light for the year. I often have ideas of what I would like to change or develop in my life and having a fixed resolution always felt like undue pressure and unavoidable disappointment. Having a “One Word Theme” feels exciting because the approach is different. Instead of saying exactly what you want to achieve, you remain open to whatever comes up throughout the year as it relates to the theme. Here is a list of possible themes.
Is there something you want more or less of in your life? It’s not just about what you might do, but about a deeper sense of change, a target emotion, for example, or a way of being. Something rather magical happens when you stay open to the theme… it begins to show you new dimensions, approaches, and ways of being with the theme that may not have occurred to you previously.
Instead of saying you want to lose 20 pounds, how about having health or light as a theme, and see where it takes you? Having a word that has multiple meanings can be very helpful also; consider ideas like open, begin, strong, landscapes, or shape. Being open to learning about the theme by harnessing what life brings in the next 52 weeks can feel enthralling and adventurous. At the start of 2022, I was not sure if we might move house. I also wanted to try a few physical fitness challenges that year, so I chose movement as my word. We didn’t move house, but I completed two 15k Mud Run Challenges. In December 2022, I learned to solve a Rubik’s cube, reducing my time with practice, in a bid to move my hands and fingers at speed.
None of this is to convince you to opt into a one-word theme, though I do think it’s a great concept. What matters is the traditional element of New Year Resolutions. We are now approaching the end of the most festive holiday season in our Western culture. It is a season full of traditions and making memories to cherish for a lifetime. It’s what makes each of us, and every family, unique. While there are many shared elements of the holidays, such as lights on a tree, or gathering for a meal… your special way of doing that as a family matters. Acknowledging your family’s traditions, claiming them, developing them, and telling tales of them, builds a strong sense of family identity. It’s saying, “This is how we do the holidays in our family,” and enjoying the annual burnt stuffing, the tree with colourful lights, and a New Year’s resolution that is quickly forgotten is worth celebrating.
