Time to step into a new year. Completely untouched as a blank new book of pages ready to be filled with new life experiences and endless space to build on your dreams! This practice is a beautiful way to honour and outline what your focus will be in 2022. If you haven’t already, before beginning to journal on 2022, I suggest taking the time to process 2021. Here is a link to a guided journaling practice to help you move through all that 2021 brought your way:

Processing a Year: 2021

Before beginning this heart-lead practice, make it a ritual. Start with a celebration! We’re about to set the scene for a completely new year: play your favourite upbeat song and dance your heart out. Then once you’ve moved your body, relax into it. Give yourself a few minutes to take some slow deep breaths as you sit down with your journal. Read the questions out loud if that’s available to you. Put pen to paper and just start writing, with curiosity, see what comes up.

• In 2022, I want to feel…

Write out all you want for this year to feel like overall. If 2022 were narrowed down to a single feeling, what would you like it to be? Perhaps this is something you noticed you were lacking or really craving in 2021 and would like to invite more of in the year ahead.

• In 2022, my dream life would look like…

Dream BIG here, the bigger the better. Don’t hold back. If you could have absolutely anything this year, what would that be? Nothing is off-limits, nothing is impossible.

• Define 3-5 clear goals in each of these life areas:

• SPACE – Your home, garden, family, pets, your community, friendships, your environment.

• HEART – Your soul, your emotions, your spirituality, your inner world.

• BODY – Your health, your physical body, self-care practice. (note: this is not in relation to looks but more about the feeling you want to achieve in relation to your body).

• PLATE – What you put on your plate (not literally here!). All that you want to create, your work, career ambitions, finances, passion projects, education/study.

Based on the pillars of Beni Knows Best, these 4 areas are a breakdown of key areas in life where your attention is distributed. Just define your goals for today, and as your move into the year you can outline exactly all the action steps that you can take to get closer to meeting the goals.

• To turn these goals into reality, what do I need?

Overall, what tangible thing do you need to implement, change, or seek in order to bring these dreams to life. This could be support, guidance, discipline, time, space, stability, health, a boundary. Narrow down what would bridge the gap between the dream and the real world. (Another way to think of this is: what tool could I access that would make my goals easier to achieve?)

• My intention for 2022 is…

Free write for a few minutes to give yourself the space to journal on this overall intention for the year. Then look over what you’ve written and narrow this intention down to one sentence. One line that clearly illustrates what you intend for 2022.

Ideally you want to be able to turn this intention into an affirmation. An affirmation is something that has already happened, something that is already true now in this present moment. A clear affirmation that you can write down and pin it up in your spaces, sprinkle it around your home, your office, your altar, repeat to yourself daily, so that you see it regularly and naturally gets so ingrained in your mind and your actions.
Some examples:

Intention: My intention for 2022 is to make everything I do and create, an act of love.

Affirmation: I am love.

Intention: My intention for 2022 is to heal my relationship to my body.

Affirmation: I am whole.

Intention: My intention for 2022 is to let go of self-doubt and step into my power.

Affirmation: I am free.

• My word of the year for 2022 is…

This word should be quite noticeably obvious at this point. Looking at everything you’ve written, what is one word that you can anchor everything into? Perhaps a word that has come up a lot in your writing, or a feeling that ultimately summarises all that this year will represent. Narrow it down to one word which will be your word for 2022.

This is so powerful. Having one word to align with. Choose your word of the year and write it nice and big on a new page, decorate and embellish it as much or as little a you want.

Speak your word out loud and have it live on your sacred altar or relevant spaces. Now trusting that through clear intention and aligned action, this whole year will start to revolve around this mighty word.

A reminder: Wanting to experience new and different things in your life, requires setting new intentions and aligning them with new actions. Meaning — you will need to do things you’ve never done before. You will outgrow who you currently are and step into the new version of you.

Are you up for that challenge?