How I Did My 2023 Reset

Happy January 1st and welcome to the new year!

I'm really excited for 2023 because there are many exciting things that are going to be happening both for my author career and for my personal life! And I feel like I am so ready to tackle this new year because I'm prepared. This is mainly because of the new year reset I did during the last two weeks of December.

Now, I know I'm a little late with my "How To Do A New Year Reset", but this was the first time I've done a reset and I would not have had the knowledge to write a "How To" blog post sooner.

Even though I'm a little late I still wanted to share what I did because it was really helpful for me.

Whether you've done your new year reset or not, I hope this is encouraging and helpful!

For those of you who might not have done a new year reset yet here are a couple of things:

I hope none of you who read this will be discouraged or overwhelmed by this post. You can take, leave, change, or modify, any of these things that I did. You can make the timeline two weeks, you could make it one week, or even a weekend.

Whatever works best for you and your schedule.

I also want to say that even though it is January 1st, and you might be discouraged that you're behind the "reset" curve, let me encourage you. You DON'T have to have your reset done by January 1st. Resets can be for any stage of your life. At any time of the year. And yes, the new year is a good way to motivate ourselves to "get our lives together", but we're not restricted to any timeline. You CAN do a reset whenever you need to!

With that covered, let's get into it!

Google Doc Brain Dump

The very first thing I did for my reset was created a "New Year Plans" Google doc. This was my base, my brain dump. I typed up all of the areas of my life I needed to evaluate, whether for plans or goals. Examples of this are Author Platform, Writing, Business, Personal Life, Health, etc.

In this doc, I also created a list I called my "Reset". Here I put things I needed to clean, like my bedroom, my laptop, and my phone. With each of these sections, I had bullet points beneath to further break down my thoughts or what I needed to do. Example: For my laptop the bullet points were, to organize folders, delete unnecessary downloads, go through the bookmarks bar, go through my emails, and finally change my background.

This step was extremely helpful because it broke all my thoughts down into small pieces that didn't overwhelm me.

Cleaning

The next step I took was completing those tasks I made in the "cleaning" section of my doc. I broke it all up to cover a week so again it wasn't overwhelming. (I think that's the key to any reset; breaking everything down so it's not overwhelming.)

The main place I cleaned was my bedroom, because I spend most of my time there. I cleaned, everything; my closet, my desk, my dresser, my junk drawers. Basically, it was a deep clean.

I think this is an important step because it makes you feel a little better and more put together.

Digital Cleaning

Next, I did a deep digital clean. This was probably the hardest and most tedious part of my reset. This was when I went through my laptop and my phone and cleaned everything out. I went through photos, emails, my bookmarks, my apps. It was the hardest because it took forever XD

But it was definitely necessary and left me feeling refreshed and accomplished. Mostly because this is the stuff I put off over and over again (I hadn't been through any of this in almost 3 years). It just feels nice to know it's done and not looming over my shoulder.

Reflecting & Marinating

Next, I did some reflecting and marinating. Technically I did this during the time I did all of the other reset tasks. I mainly did this because I wanted to let all of my thoughts on this year's goals and plans to marinate. While I'm now looking forward to this year, I was feeling very overwhelmed and unsure all of December. This year is weird for me because it's split into two distinct sections and seasons of life. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to plan and set goals for a whole year when really it was for two seasons of life (one of which I'm very unsure of.)

I started off this step by reflecting on 2022. I went over my goals, answered questions I had written for myself, and answered some end-of-year prompt questions.

After that reflection, I started marinating. While I was doing all the other tasks I was letting myself think through 2023. I was letting my mind wander with potential ideas for goals and plans. Also during this marinating stage, I created a Pinterest board with pins with the idea or aesthetic that I saw 2023 having. I also created a brief list of potential goals on my phone app.

And let me say, I highly suggest that! Leaving time to think over the goals you want to set is very helpful. It made my goal-setting session so much easier.

Goal Setting

Now, for the actual goal setting. I started by making a list of categories to divide my goals into. The categories were as follows: health, spiritual, relationships, mindset, wealth, career, writing, personal growth, and random.

With these categories, I did a goal brain dump, where I dumped all of my goal ideas. Then from there I moved the ones I wanted to keep onto my official 2023 Goals page and made it look pretty and organized (because why wouldn't I XD).

Word Setting

After setting my goals, I took a look at my vision board and my goals and I decided to pick my 2023 word or rather words. This is just the main idea or mindset you want to have throughout the year.

Quarter 1 Goal Setting

Finally, I took a look at my yearly goals and I broke them down into goals that needed to be accomplished in the first 3 months of the year so that I will be one step closer to my end-of-year goals.

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This was my first year doing a reset like this and as I said many times it was very beneficial and has me ready to take on the new year with confidence!

Well, that is all for this blog post! Hopefully, this was helpful and encouraging for all of you!

As I said, 2023 is going to be a big and exciting year! I plan on taking you further into my year by sharing more of what I am working on during this season of my life. One of the ways I plan on doing that is by sharing some of my goals and plans for 2023 in an upcoming blog post!

I'm also going to be getting more personal about my 2023 journey and growth over on my Instagram and my newsletter. So follow me on both if that interests you :D

With Love, Kathryn Hawke