Having finished reviewing the past year, next on the agenda is planning the new one. And I’ve found a process to do this that I simply love – Waverly Fitzgerald’s New Year Dreams class. This is my second year working this way. It’s a fun process that I liken to a huge funnel – each step involves sorting, distilling, filtering.
Beginning the process is the dreaming BIG phase – What is it I want to accomplish this year? What interests me? What do I want to focus on? It’s time to invite all the wishes to the table to be heard. And carefully making note of them. Because there are always some surprises. In my mind’s eye I envision this part of the process as creating a mound of wonderful sparkling confetti – each piece a dream/wish/goal. And then they get dumped into the funnel for filtering.
Through the next stages magic happens and themes emerge, a guiding principle is uncovered, and suddenly goals and wishes are organized in a makes-sense pattern.
The final step in the process is figuring out the time piece. What’s the best way to structure your time so that these things actually happen? For me some goals require daily and/or weekly attention; some are seasonal, and some are one-time efforts. But having a sense of it all makes planning easier.
Last year I got in the habit of keeping track of what I wanted to accomplish during the month and then reviewing at month’s end to see how I was doing. For me that’s a good system – it keeps me motivated and helps me catch what needs tweaking fairly early on. And also it somehow brings to bear a sense of accountability that I find helpful; as well as providing an opportunity to consciously celebrate accomplishments. That’s always a nice thing!
Overall the New Year Dreams process fits in nicely with January’s medicine of Stillness and Listening.
No doubt I’ll be blogging more about my themes and goals in future posts as they’ll be things I’m focusing on this year. But for now I’ll reveal that my guiding principle for the year is Expansive Expression.
Do you have a guiding principle for 2009?