My word for the year, a waving goodbye to social media and a slow beginning

With the hustle and bustle a new year often brings, I've been easing into things slowly

Hello you and happy new year, happy 2023.

May this year bring you contentment, joy, adventure and a trust within yourself towards yourself, a further strengthening of your intuition. May 2023 be the year you reclaim yourself.

I’m not one for rushing into the new year with goals, objectives, resolutions and that get up and go the world seems to have. I like to ease into it gently, testing the water, turning inwards to explore the things I’d like to focus on for the next 12 months. We can’t ever predict how our year will go, the trials and tribulations we’ll come up against, but we can pick a word to return to time and time again. A word which acts as an anchor, to continually reclaim ourselves, who we are, who we want to be.

My words from previous years are as follows:

2022 - Intention

2021 - Stability

2020 - Adventure

2019 - Flow

And for this year, it’s ‘Intuition’. I’ve tried on other words, played with phrases which didn’t quite fit. Intuition fits. I have a feeling this word will anchor me repeatedly in 2023, and whilst we can’t see into the future, there are things in the pipeline for 2023 that are likely to weigh heavily on my mind. Times I’ll doubt myself, my actions, my plans, and if I can remember to tune into that intuition, my gut feeling, my instinct, I know it will steer me in the right direction.

You may be wondering why Intuition? Especially when much of the work I do in coaching is in teaching others to tune into their intuition. Surely I can tick that one off my list? That isn’t how personal development works, we don’t just learn to do something and forevermore embrace this quality or strength without thinking. We’re human, we’re constantly growing and one of the things that can hold us back the most, is thinking we’re done in absolutely everything and anything. I prefer to think of life as a continual scenic route where we learn and grow and practice and make mistakes and return to what we know, evolving into the person we’re becoming as we do.

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

As we came to the end of 2022, I made a decision to move away from social media for a while. Not a forever decision, not a set amount of time away, but time away, to focus on this longer, gentler content which I find I’m able to give so much more to. More ideas, more information and knowledge, more resources to support those in the Nourishing Soulfully Community. It wasn’t a choice I made lightly and I wondered if I’d instantly regret it. Yet, a week in, I’ve read three books, spent time exploring ideas for this Substack, my podcasts (there are three!), the NS Kindness Letters and blog. My sleep has improved and it’s felt right. I’ve felt the pressure lift, that pressure to come up with short videos and record moments of my day for stories. Time spent aimlessly scrolling has been replaced with reading, snoozing, walking, writing. I know, right now, this is the very best thing I can do not only for myself, but for my business too. For many it may seem like a pretty low key decision, but for someone who has grown their business online, it felt like a scary, unknown step. But also, a step I knew I needed to take in 2023.

I’d love to know what your hopes for 2023 are, if you have a word for the year or an intention and how you’ve begun this year, if you feel comfortable to share, join me in the comments below this post.

If you’re curious, you can find the above places below:

• Nourishing Soulfully Blog

• Eat, Move, Live Intuitively Podcast

• Nourish Podcast - heal your relationship with food: Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music & ACast

• Nourishing Soulfully Podcast - Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music & ACast

• Sign up to the Nourishing Soulfully weekly newsletter here

Be gentle, be kind.

You’re doing the best you can, always.

Peta x