Prioritize your misogi.
Give this year a job.
Think back to every year of your life. Each year has a defining moment. Each year is stored in your memory as “the year the kids were born”, “the year I graduated high school”, “the year I started backpacking” or “the year my parents divorced”.
According to Wikipedia, 'misogi’ is the Japanese Shinto practice of ritual purification, the interpretation I stumbled across from Jess Itzler was more of an annual reset and evaluation of your life’s goal, where you decide how your year will be defined.
This completely changed the way I looked at annual goal setting.
Goal setting before misogi.
My years were defined for most of my life, especially when I was younger. I just went along for the ride. As I got older, I began to set goals and have objectives. Sometimes there were so many goals, ideas, and opportunities I would be overwhelmed with what direction I ought to go, and stressing about how to get them all done.
Even into my late thirties, and early forties, I would fret about things I wasn’t doing. I was stressing about things that lived in my ideal world with no idea which one was more critical, or which could build a better foundation for my life.
In the last few years, I began to shortlist my goals and bucket them into three categories - and determined that all things in my life would fit into this structure:
Basic Goal Categories:
Health
Wealth
Family
And they did! I can easily map all of my goals back into each bucket. There was no shortage of opportunities I saw in my life that needed a focus, a goal, and a plan. For example - I seem to always have aspirations for growing my career, losing weight or getting fit, supporting my kids during whichever stage of life they are experiencing, exploring new friendships and social events (not even going to mention dating), exploring my hobbies and passions, working on the house, starting a business - the list goes on and on and on - my mind would race towards an ideal state, and very quickly feel overwhelmed with all the things “I needed to do .”
That just seemed to organize the chaos, though. I regularly tracked habits, and objectives, and opportunities for 5, 10, 15 goals per bucket. Although some were achieved, it still felt like throwing spaghetti at the wall. I had hoped these goals would come together and create one awesome version of myself. What I needed was one goal to rule them all.
One Goal to Rule them all.
What Jesse Ickler helped me understand was how one clear goal for the year defines that year. I am pretty sure people who practice actual misogi are rolling their eyes at this definition - but I embrace it fully. I use the word misogi to define how I intend my year to be. Sure, lightning can strike that would redefine my year. But I am speaking of I can focus on daily, keeping in the forefront of my mind all year long; the idea that will influence how I prioritize. If it’s in support of my misogi - it gets a “yes”. If its not…. well, TBD at best.
And, I now have a word that encapsulates this focus and prioritization strategy for my north star.
Misogi (my definition):
“The one thing, that prioritizing above all other goals, ideas, and opportunities, will define my year.”
If I could go back to my thirty-year-old self and tell her one thing, it might be this: Stop trying to do everything. Focus on one thing, and you’ll be surprised how much progress you can make in life. As it stands, its never too late to start. And so for my forty-something-year-old self, I have my 2025 misogi in mind, and it has already helped me stay on course, say no to things that get in the way of my achieving this year’s purpose. I hope it does the same for you.
