What Agreements are you Making for 2025?
Why Your Yes/No List Determines Everything
I am not one who judges a year (yours OR mine) by a long list of impressive accomplishments.
Truly, sometimes survival is the greatest accomplishment a year can boast.
At the same time, I have watched years of my life take on the tone I silently made agreements with — agreeing to continued bitterness rather than forgiveness. Agreeing to staying in relationships that had long run their course. Agreeing to exhaustion when the Lord was clearly calling me to rest.
And I learned a few years ago that the way I enter into a new year — hobbling in or feeling clear-minded and joyful — depends largely upon the lived life from my yes/no list.
Here’s what is on my current yes/no list for 2025:
A NO to people's emotional management: I am no longer willing to manage other people's overwhelm and emotions. (This is different from being willing to love people, which is always crucial.)
A YES to believing God: I’ll be writing much more about this, but for the second half of 2024, this is what God has been calling me to, and I’m just getting started on a belief journey like never before in 2025.
A YES to honoring my body even more profoundly: This is something else I’ll write more about soon, but in 2024 for the first time I can remember, I broke a commitment to a friend because I put what my body needed, first. This was huge for me, and I learned a great deal from it, which I want to carry into 2025.
A NO to being owned by the internet: For the second year in a row, I am making this commitment to process some things without writing about them on Instagram (which was why the reason for my close circle group here). Once again this “no” proves to me that the internet doesn't own my heart.
A NO to my own ego: I want to continue to say no to great opportunities if they are simply flattering or appear impressive but aren’t the best use of my gifts and don’t make sense for my season with needs in ministry and family.
A YES to letting go: I really don’t want to write this one. But I sense it’s the year for some letting gos that only God and I know about — and maybe some only He knows that I don’t. Breaking up with some old habits and patterns that have long needed to go.
What’s on your yes/no list?
No matter what happens this year, it really will determine what kind of year you have. Our yes’s and no’s are agreements with ourselves that live outside of outside circumstances. Most of all, they are important commitments we make to honor God with our one precious life.
Hint: Make a list that your 2026 self will thank you for!
—> I have a different very specific list of who I’ll be following on social in 2025 (and yes, I name names!) and why — if you want to know that and hear my current favorite follow (I think this will surprise you), keep reading!