Monday, 1/27/25: Talking about settling into 2025

Happy Monday!

It’s a new week, which means it’s time for your next Monday motivation newsletter.

Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday and some positive thoughts to get your week started.

Three Steps to a Happier Monday

Each newsletter starts with three prompts to inspire gratitude and simple intention setting. Take a moment and jot down answers to these three questions. To give an example, I share my answers below.  

Step 1: What are three things I appreciated from the weekend? 

Step 2: What is one thing I can be excited about today?

Step 3: What is my intention for this week? 

GRATITUDE: From my weekend, I am thankful for sun, having fun running errands and quiet time. 

TODAY: Today, I’m most excited to send this newsletter after a little hiatus! 

INTENTION: My intention this week is to commit to getting up early every morning (getting back to it!).

Okay, your turn! And if you want to share your three steps, I am all ears. 🙂

Meaningful Musings: 2025 Intention & Goals

Hello!!! I am back!! 

It’s been about a month (!) since I wrote last and wow… what a month it has been! (Also, HOW is it still January?!) 

Matt and I were married Friday, January 3, surrounded by our family and friends in a PERFECT wedding ceremony and reception that exceeded every expectation. The next day, we boarded a flight that took us back to snowy Chicago where we unpacked to re-pack and got a few hours of sleep before heading back to the airport to get on another plane that took us to beautiful MAUI. 

Eight days of sunshine, delicious food & drinks and sightseeing, and now here we are… back in Chicago settling into our routines and into 2025… as newlyweds! 

I don’t think I’ve smiled as much as I have over the past three weeks. My heart still feels so full from the love Matt and I felt from every kind message to friends and family traveling and choosing to spend their time with us. Thank you!! I can’t wait to share more details and reflections from the wedding in future newsletters to come!!! 

But in the meantime, I hope you’ve had a great start to your 2025. How’s it going? So much has already happened this year – hoping you’ve gotten a chance to catch your breath and have some moments of good in the midst of it all. 

At the beginning of a new year, I love to pick a one-word intention and set some annual goals. I’m a little behind schedule this year, but I’ve enjoyed the extra time to percolate on what I hope to do and cultivate in the year ahead. So, if you’ve been wanting to set some goals for the new year but haven’t gotten around to it yet, let this be your permission! Don’t be beholden to a certain date… start whenever you want! A Monday is always a great day to turn over a new leaf 🙂 

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know I love setting goals. I love annual goals, I love monthly goals. But for me, the best part of goal setting is not the achieving part. The best part is the reflection and preparation that happens. Setting goals prompts me to think about the current state of things, what’s coming up, and what I want less or more of. Ultimately, it directs me and helps define how I want to spend my time.

So, let’s do some goal setting for 2025! 

First, let’s start with the big picture. 

What’s happening this year?

• Well, we certainly started 2025 off with a bang by getting married and taking our big trip (Hawaii!) for the year! 
• Matt & I both start the year as 30 but will turn 31 in April & August.
• Weddings continue to be a theme for us! I have a good friend’s wedding in February, Matt’s brother gets married in July and I’m a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding in September. 
• Generally just settling into married life and figuring out what our next chapter looks like! 

With all that considered, I’ve decided my word of the year is going to be… SAVOR.

After a big year of planning and preparing, I’m excited to focus on savoring this year. Savoring the big moments, the small moments, and even the hard stuff. Not everything is meant be savored, but even when I’m dealing with some difficult, I’m sure I can find something worth savoring to direct my attention to. 

I’m loving the word already. Countless times during our wedding week and honeymoon, I’ve thought to myself, SAVOR! Take a mental picture! Remember this! Some more savoring inspiration here. 

I also kept “savor” in mind when crafting my goals for the year.

My 2025 Goals 

I like to set annual goals across a couple different areas:

Personal Care & Growth

+ Always be reading. Pretty self-explanatory! Reading enhances my life in so many ways, and I want to always make sure I have at least one book I’m actively reading. I also hope this helps me abandon books I’m not enjoying sooner… life is too short to read books you aren’t into!

+ Take one “me day” a quarter. I’m finding more and more how recharging alone time is for me. I want to carve out a couple of days throughout the year where I can just rest, see where the day takes me and get in touch with myself. I’ve already done my Q1 day and plan to do a Q2 me day around my birthday!

+ Start doing a shutdown ritual at work. Cal Newport talks about the benefits of a “shutdown ritual” or doing the same series of actions to end your workday, helping you to mentally register that work is over & transition into non-work time. I love this idea, but I’ve tried to adopt the habit a couple times and failed. Using the energizing feeling of a new year to try again! Think I could benefit a lot from it. 

Health 

+ Aim for a weekly average of 8 hours of sleep a night. After training for a half marathon in 2023 and focusing on feeling my best for the wedding last year, excited to take the focus off fitness in the “working out” sense this year! I feel like my workout routine is pretty automatic at this point, but what I would like to focus on more this year is SLEEP!! I plan to use my Oura ring to track this and focus on – as best I can – getting those 8 hours of sleep a night. 

Relationships

+ Revel in celebrating family & friends’ milestones. As mentioned, we have some weddings this year and I have a family member who will celebrate a milestone birthday. Can’t wait to show up and celebrate for all!!

+ Weekly “mini-dates” with Matt. The best part of our honeymoon was all the quality time together thanks to minimal distractions… (no work, no social obligations, not a ton of sports to watch, haha). It was so lovely to have long-winding conversations that never really needed to end and just enjoy each other’s company. It made me realize that even though Matt and I are around each other all the time in our day-to-day life, quality time can be hard to come by. This year, I’m hoping to start some kind of weekly tradition – whether that be a simple game night or just intentionally sitting on the couch and talking without the TV on – where we can catch up and spend some time together.

Creativity & Fun

+ Start writing in my one-line-a-day journal. For Christmas, my brother got me a one-line-a-day journal and I’ve been LOVING writing a quick sentence or two about my day. Really helps me savor those everyday moments and will be fun to look back on in the years to come!

+ Have fun recapping the wedding & honeymoon. I’ve already had fun making a “homemade” wedding video with clips captured and can’t wait to get photos from back from the photographer and create albums and recap some of my favorite memories here. I want to be intentional about my approach, knowing that I’m creating things our family will look back on for years to come.  

+ Make dinner once a week with just music playing. So often when I’m making dinner, I’m multitasking and either listening to a podcast or audiobook. I love podcasts and audiobooks, but there is something relaxing about just cooking to music! More of that in 2025 please. 

+ Spruce up the design of this newsletter. This newsletter and website are the result of my inexperience when it comes to graphic design. I think in the sixth (!) year of this newsletter, we could amp up the design a bit!

Home & Finances

+ Two no-shop months. I love a no-shop (no clothes, shoes, etc.) month. I usually do it during January, but obviously, this month was a little different this year. So, planning to do February and maybe September? 

+ Write down purchases for the month. On months I am shopping, I want to try out keeping a running list of purchases to reflect on at the end of the month. It’s so helpful for me to SEE and register purchases to cultivate mindful spending. 

And that’s it! I think it is going to be a really great year. 

I’d love to hear about your plans for 2025! 

From the archives: 2024 Goals

Picture of the Week

That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this! 

Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan