Family Resolutions to Thrive in 2022

Setting New Year’s Family Resolutions to Thrive in 2022

Setting New Year’s resolutions is a popular practice for people to focus on areas they would like to improve, or changes they would like to make within their lives for the year ahead. This activity can also be done as a family, to make plans together, to encourage and support each other, and to focus on positive ways to help each other thrive and feel more connected. Here’s a handy guide for setting New Year’s family resolutions for 2022.
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Before you start setting your resolutions, here’s what you will need to do:

Schedule some quiet time together
Firstly, you will need to find a free hour or so where you and the family can all sit together, away from TV and mobile devices. Choose a time in between meals and naps, so that there aren’t any other distractions and everyone is able to enjoy the activity for the allocated time.

Find space to spread out
Ideally, you want to be seated around a table with plenty of space for everyone to spread out, but this could also be done on the floor, with something for people to lean on when they are taking part.

Gather some tools
This activity requires minimal materials, but you can get as creative as you want with it! Paper or a notebook for each person is essential, as well as pens or pencils. Make it a fun and creative activity that the children will love by incorporating scrapbooking elements, such as collage, photographs, and arts and crafts materials to cut, stick and decorate!

Setting goals, intentions and visions for the future
If you're new to setting goals, set 2 for each area below and review after 6 months; if you’re already goal committed, set 3 to 5 for each area and review after 6 months:

Your personal goals, intentions and vision for the future
Focus areas:

1. Health/Wellbeing 
2. Money
3. Friends
4. Family
5. Business
6. Education
7. Giving

Family goals, intentions and vision for the future

1. Holidays
2. Health/Wellbeing 
3. Savings
4. Quality time
5. Day trips

This is a great opportunity for discussion involving all family members, to share what they want more of in their home life and raise any areas that they feel could be improved.

Things like ‘being more present when I’m around my children’, ‘spending more time outdoors together’, ‘doing more screen-free activities together’ can be a good place to start.

Once you’ve set these intentions, talk about how you can take steps to make this happen - for example, to engage in more screen-free activities, you could all agree on set times or days where your TV is turned off and mobile devices are left in a different room away from your family activities.

Sharing hopes and dreams
Encourage your family to share their greatest hopes and desires for their future - what would they love to do, to achieve, or to learn? This is all about discovering and acknowledging each person’s individual passions, but also about your desires for your family life. Once you’ve done this you can then focus on ways to pursue these passions and how you can support each other to do so.

Plans for the year ahead
This can simply be things you would like to do as a family throughout the year - from going swimming, to taking up a club at school, to going on holiday. There may be a range of different activities brought up - some may be suitable for the whole family, whilst others may be something that is best suited to a child doing one-on-one with a parent, especially in the case of having younger or older siblings.
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Get creative with it
Even the younger family members who cannot yet write can still get involved - encourage your family to draw pictures, stick photographs, cut and stick images from magazines, to form a vision board of what they want to do, to experience, and to focus on for the year ahead.

We hope this guide has given you some useful ideas for setting New Year’s resolutions as a family this year, to bring you closer together, understand each other, and support each other through the ups and downs life brings.