It can be easy as a couple to go through our days, months, years and not really have a vision or direction. But we’ve found that planning for the new year as a couple helps us to not only catch a vision for what the next year can look like but also reflect on the good and the hard from the previous year. We’ve been planning for the new year as a couple for a few years now and have found a rhythm that fits well for our family.
Planning For The New Year As A Couple
Set Aside A Weekend Away
In all reality, this hasn’t always happened for our family. We are protective of who watches our children and for some years we haven’t lived by family. This means that rather than setting aside a weekend away, we’ve set aside a week’s worth of evenings. But when we get away for a weekend it’s such a sweet time of connection. Our anniversary is in January so we couple our anniversary weekend with our Planning For The New Year As A Couple weekend. I know that some people rather plan for the new year during November and December which is great, too. The main thing is planning a time and intentionally setting it apart for this purpose. During our weekend away or those evenings in, we go through our New Year Reflection and Vision Framework. Which leads us to our next step.
Have A Plan for Planning For The New Year As A Couple
Having a plan for your time together helps you maximize your efforts and jump into the new year with excitement and vision. We’ve developed our framework over years of trying different approaches, liking parts of some and tweaking parts of others. We created a simple PDF for you to download and use with your spouse as well, if you’d like. (see below)
Reflect Before Looking Forward
No matter what our planning time looks like we always always start with reflecting on the previous year. It can be so encouraging to look back and see how far we’ve come, or how faithful God has been to us if the year has been especially difficult. I bring our big wall calendar and we go month by month through our year, reflecting on the highs and lows.
If we’re only ever looking forward we can feel a bit discouraged or overwhelmed. It can feel like we still have so far to go. But looking back first allows us to start from a place of gratitude. Many things that we spend our time on won’t show up on a progress report or be checked off of a goals list but it’s time very well spent, nonetheless. From there we can look forward to all that we wish this next year to hold with excitement and anticipation.
Related: 7 At Home Date Night Ideas
Pause, pray, and thank the Lord for the previous year
Dream For The Future
Pause, pray, and ask the Lord for a vision for what He wants for this coming year
This is a really sweet time to catch a vision of what the Lord has for your family in the coming year. Take time to get quiet, pray, and write down what you see for the coming year. This can be done separately and then shared or done entirely together. Write down anything and everything that comes to mind. One question that we love to ask is ‘What do we want to be true in the next year?’ We ask this question for five areas of our life; faith, family, friends, fitness, and finances. ‘What do we want to be true in the next year for our children?’ ‘What do we want to be true in the next year for our marriage?’ Both of those questions fall under the ‘family’ category and both are very important to ask. If you’d like a complete guide for planning for the new year as a couple you can see below where I’ll share our entire weekend agenda that we use to work through our planning time together.
Once we have a vision for the year we like to start putting things down on the calendar so that we make sure they actually happen.
Schedule Your Year
This may sound a bit overwhelming but it’s actually a very peaceful process. Whatever you know you are going to commit time to in the new year, put it on the calendar at the beginning of the year. This allows you to make sure that you are spending your time intentionally and towards the vision you have. Even if it’s something that we want to do but haven’t committed to, we put it on the calendar. That way, when we are asked to commit to anything extra we can already see what we intended for that time to be.
It’s easy to feel like you can commit to something in June if you have nothing on the calendar. It’s easier to say no, however, when you look at June and see that you already planned to do 3-4 things that are of high value for your family and your vision. Basically, it’s a budget for your time.
Pause, pray, and ask the Lord for his blessing over the year to come.
Celebrate a weekend well spent and then head on home to your sweet babies and celebrate together!
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