The New Year is quickly approaching! It’s around this time every year we begin to contemplate how this year went and how we want next year to go. Who do you want to be in 2023? That’s an important question to ask yourself. On this week’s Do the Damn Thing Podcast, I share my personal goals moving into the New Year and how I plan to get back into the foundational practices of intentional living. In the podcast, I also prompt the listeners to ponder this question of identity for 2023. A natural response to this question is to answer with variables of your life rather than qualities of who you are. But, as we move into the New Year, there is a brighter light, which means we need to be Intentional in 2023.

When you’re pondering this question of identity and how to be intentional in 2023, the answers lie in quality, not quantity. It’s not about how much you want to accomplish, how much money you want to make or how much you want to travel. It’s about who you are now and how you want to grow over the next year. It’s not about how much you can do, where you can go, and how much you earn. Remember, our internal expansion is always reflected in our external reality. Meaning if you focus on your expansion, growth, and love within, those things will be reflected in your experience. If we drive our focus internally, we can make 2023 a genuinely intentional year. As with every new year, we want the occasion to bring momentum and change. To do this, all we need to do is assess, reflect, and expand.

The Steps to Being Intentional in 2023

If you’re a loyal reader of La.Rue, you know my content has shifted to a far more spiritual realm than analytical. But even still, sometimes the value of a piece of content can lie in getting nitty-gritty with advice. This is why I choose to take a more step-by-step approach with this post. The “steps” to being intentional in 2023 don’t lie in the contemplative realm. These are true, actionable steps you can take to create subtle but meaningful change in your life in the New Year.

ONE | ASSESS

We must step back and reflect on our past to create change for our future. Humans are an ever-evolving species. It’s in our nature to want to grow and expand. It’s always with these milestones—the new year, birthdays, etc.—that we find we’re in that contemplative state and desiring change. For some reason, these moments in our lives prompt deep self-reflection. Unfortunately, many people see this time as a way to focus solely on where they’ve “fallen short.” This time to assess is all about acknowledging accomplishment and leveraging previous success as momentum. In no way does it serve us to reflect on our past with an air of disdain and disappointment. We cannot change the past; we can only embrace it.

Our period of assessment is about looking at what you’ve accomplished over the last year that has felt intentional and how you can carry that into 2023. This doesn’t mean accolades you’ve received, promotions, travel, income, etc. This is about looking— with deep soul-searching and intuitive assessment, at who you were in 2022 and how you showed up. Things to “assess” go back to the core foundation of Intentional Living. We want to look at habits, routines, healing, relationship with self and others, growth, expansion, spirituality, etc. Step one to being intentional in 2023 is about looking at who you were and who you want to be.

Two | Reflect

Step two is to reflect, perhaps the most critical step. Here, we are posed with a challenge, although I believe this is an opportunity to lean into expansion (step three) rather than complacency. This is our opportunity to have self-compassion for significant growth. After we’ve assessed (which you can do on pen and paper), it’s time to reflect on what changes you’d like to make. Over the last three years, my journey has been entirely intentional. But over the last several months, what has been intentional has shifted. When I began my journey, it was about the foundation of intentionality rather than the spiritual or metaphysical sense. I worked tirelessly to instill positive habits and routines that made my life feel intentional and put me back in the driver’s seat of my life.

Lately, intentionality has been more about my business and my relationships. And while it’s normal and perfectly okay for priorities to shift, sometimes it’s essential to shift them back a bit. While I value my relationships and business with all my heart and soul, I can’t show up best for them if I’m not showing up best for myself. My reflection for this next year will be to lean back into that original thought behind Intentional Living. I will re-establish my core foundation for my intentional life. As you reflect, I invite you to do this with great compassion and excitement for growth. Leading us into the third and final “step.”

Three | Expand

In every moment of our lives, we are expanding, growing, and evolving; this is inevitable. But one of the greatest gifts of our journey is our ability to decide to be intentional about that growth, expansion, and evolution. We are always in the driver’s seat of our lives. Even when everything feels out of our control, this is an opportunity for intentionality; it’s up to us to see it. And when we take the time to assess and reflect with compassion, we open ourselves up to the opportunity for expansion. We want to be intentional in 2023 with our expansion and journey. Once you’ve assessed and reflected, it’s time to create the actionable steps. Here, you’ll make the typical “New Year” reflections but with greater care.

Write out your goals and your intentions for 2023. To be intentional, we have to create intention. Intentionality is about allowing one single, effective change to have causation over the rest of your life. We have to set ourselves up for success by creating causation. We expect ourselves to wake up on January 1st a changed person without any effective changes made. Allow your expansion to happen over the year. Be open to expanding over time as you establish new intentions and new goals. When we are intentional, we are expansive. By creating this causation, we open ourselves up to far living a far more intentional life in 2023.