Kick off the new year with intention and purpose! In this episode, Chelsea discusses how to shift away from traditional resolutions toward a more values-driven approach. She shares practical strategies for setting meaningful goals, breaking them into manageable actions, and cultivating daily intentions to foster growth in parenting, relationships, and personal well-being.
Kick off the new year with intention and purpose! In this episode, Chelsea discusses how to shift away from traditional resolutions toward a more values-driven approach. She shares practical strategies for setting meaningful goals, breaking them into manageable actions, and cultivating daily intentions to foster growth in parenting, relationships, and personal well-being.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Chelsea Dorcich. A transcript is available as Simplecast.
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How do your New Years usually start? Are you coming up with resolutions? Do you have any hesitancies or angst around setting resolutions? And how do you usually start the year off with your kids? Do they make resolutions?
Hi, welcome back to Project Parenthood. I am your host, Chelsea Dorcic, Licensed Marriage Family Therapist. I am here to join you on your conscious parenting journey, bringing more curiosity, openness, acceptance, kindness, and non judgment along the way. My goal is for us to accept what is out of our control, commit to improving our parenting life, and discover better outcomes for ourselves and our family.
On today's episode, I want to talk about values, goals, and intentions, and what it would look like if we use these instead of resolutions this year. We talked a lot about values in my first episode with you last year. For a refresher, feel free to go back to episode 761. Values are our desired qualities of behavior.
How do we want to behave right now and on an ongoing basis? Do we want to be loving, caring, kind? What values do we tie to our relationships? Do we want to be fun? What values do we tie to parenting? Do we want to be playful or present? What about our work? Do we want to be hardworking, dependable, etc? Goals are what we aim for in the future.
What do we want to achieve? What do we want to have? What do you want to complete? What do we want to own? Actions are part of our goals and our values. They are what we say or do in order to pursue our goals or live our values. What if you started this year reflecting on statements that relate directly to your values?
Last year, I spent too much time worrying about. Last year, I did not spend enough time doing things such as. If I could go back in time, this is what I would do differently. Take the time to reflect on these for yourself and then with your children. Share your own personal reflections with them and encourage your children to reflect on their year in alignment with their values.
I love doing this with my family and my patients every year. Let's look at how we approach values and goals. If one of your values is self caring, you could have so many different goals under that value, such as eating healthy, Going to the gym, taking a lunch break, getting a better job, going to bed at a sensible time, asking for help, going to the doctor, etc.
Some of these goals you may have tried over the years and possibly failed. However, there are still so many more goals you can pursue that align with that one value. of self caring or whatever you pick. And remember that you have a few different values for each area of your life. There's parenting, relationships, work, personal growth, health.
So it can be a different value for each area. You can start with one goal under your chosen value, and then break that goal up into smaller actions. And every one of those actions, no matter how small, is aligned with your value. Each small action can also be turned into a smaller goal. So when it's something you aim to do in the future, you consider it a goal.
But when you're actually doing it, it's called taking action. So maybe your goal is to make healthier food. So Smaller actions might be okay. I need to make a better grocery list. I need to find time to go shopping or I need to do research on for a menu, etc. So trying to break it into smaller pieces. And this is what we can teach our children as well.
Is that a goal can be big or small. But if it is big, try breaking it up into different smaller pieces, whether those pieces are smaller goals or just smaller action points.
Let's talk about intentions. Intentions are always deliberate. They are an articulation of a conscious goal. Intentions keep us going in the direction we truly mean to go, while it's motivation that keeps us going. So when we set an intention. We want to reflect on questions like, what do I value deeply?
Or, what in the depth of my heart do I wish for myself, for my loved ones, and for the world around me? The more specific you are with your intentions, the more likely you are to do it. To make the intention stronger, share it with someone close to you. There are a lot of believers that if you talk about it too widely, it can actually hurt you.
dissipate the energy of the intention and kind of lose almost the essence of it. Intentions can set the tone for our day and we can check in with our intentions throughout the day. At the end of your day, you can reconnect with your intention, finding joy with what you have achieved to connect with your aspirations and not getting caught up with the details of what you did or did not do.
So our goal is not to, at the day, have shame or disappointment or judgment that we. Didn't meet our intention. If anything, we used that to motivate us to maybe reset the intention in the morning the next morning, or how can I tweak this intention so that it's more realistic or more in alignment with my values?
At the end of the day, you can also just find joy, the fact that you took time to start your day with setting an intention. So let's put that all together. If. One of my parenting values is being present. I might reflect on last year and go through those statements. What did I worry too much about? What did I not do enough of?
And how did it maybe take away or add to me being a present parent? I might set a goal, an intention of being a more present parent. And what does that mean? So I might look at, Oh, I might need to navigate my work schedule. Or if I can recalibrate it. So that I am able to be more present when I'm off of work, or maybe my workout schedule has to be different so that I'm able to be more present when my children are home or meal prepping, looking at all the different areas of my life and where I can find more room to be present for my children.
Or maybe there were moments last year that, wow, I really was really present and I want to redo that. And I'm going to think about what actions I need to take and what daily intentions I need to set. That's it for this week's edition of Project Parenthood. Remember to be curious, open, accepting, kind, and nonjudgmental on your conscious parenting journey.
If you have any questions about this episode, about your parenting journey, and or topics you'd like to hear more about, please reach out to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com, or leave a message at 646-926-8888-3243. Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips, Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, Morgan Christianson, and Brannan Goetschius.
May you be happy, safe and protected, healthy and strong, and live with ease.