Happy New Year! How is everybody doing with their resolutions? I don't usually make resolutions per se, but I have been working on a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG for short. I don't make this stuff up!) of my own for a while now: designing my life.
I'm interested in A LOT of things. This makes me a pretty well-rounded person, but also makes me feel like I have a bit of adult ADD at times, as my interests shift all over the place in a relatively short period of time. Sometime last year, I decided to finally try to turn this into a strength by capitalizing on my various interests to devise a life that is better suited to my personality than something more traditional involving a 9-5 job.
One of my first steps towards this BHAG was to start Red Porch Co. As I get older, I find myself wanting more and more to be in control of my own circumstances. I don't really expect to ever not have to work for somebody else, at least not until my student loans are paid off, but this small little business gives me my own platform to try out new things, learn new things, and sink or swim based on my own efforts. There is something incredibly empowering about that! Contact me if you're interested in the possibility of your own small businesses and we can talk about if it's right for you.
So that was my first step, but I didn't have much of a plan for the next, and I realized I needed to be more deliberate in my choices than I have been in the past. THEN it occurred to me that being deliberate requires deliberation. In other words, a whole lot of really tough thought!
I've enlisted a few tools as I guide myself through this process and thought I'd share them with you. =)
First, a failsafe.
All this deliberation and thinking about moving on in life requires a little something to bring me back into the moment. My dog is huge for this. Dogs are masterful at living in the moment! Sure they have memories and build associations (positive and negative), but mostly they are perfectly content to just enjoy life as it comes to them. She is my role model.
I found another idea to help with staying in the moment on Pinterest: the 5-year journal. There are printed/bound versions for sale at your local bookshop, or on Amazon, but I just opened a Word document. For reflective sorts of things I generally prefer to get myself a nice pen and write by hand, but I want the opportunity to keep it going for more than 5 years, so a Word doc seemed to make more sense. This is not pour-out-your-heart journaling. Simply jot down something of note from that day, and move on. I miss a day here and there but just fill in as I go. I've been mostly consistent about it, and I look forward to being able to see the same date a few years in retrospect.
Now, the tools.
A website I'm loving right now is Be More With Less, and the associated Project 333. These help to re-focus on what's important (hint: it's not stuff).
I'm also making my way through the Unraveling the Year Ahead 2013 Workbook. I'm taking much longer than the recommended hour with it but one of my personal lessons learned is to take things at my own pace, so I'm okay with that.
A friend just sent me this NYT article while I was in the process of writing this. Self-reflection is the secret ingredient to success.
Then, the influence.
As I get older, I'm learning more and more how important it is to surround myself with positive people. This doesn't mean your friends aren't allowed to tell you about the awful day they had, but overall, I'm trying to have more positive people around me.
The flipside of this is to also attempt to BE a positive influence!
Some bloggers and their blogs I've found helpful include:
Cassie at Back to Her Roots (Loosely a healthy lifestyle blog, but pretty hard to categorize.)
Carol and Kathryn at In Pursuit of Pretty Things (These lovely ladies went to my high school before my time, so we are acquaintances in real life, but I think I'd like them even if that weren't the case. They manage to strike a difficult balance between writing about fashion and similar forms of expression while being wonderfully intelligent and thoughtful about the big picture in the process.)
Kimberly at Poor Girl Eats Well (I like to eat, and she's got budget-friendly recipes that taste great and are often in smaller single-person-worthy portions (read: not a 6 quart crock pot recipe, not that there's anything wrong with that). She's also had her fair share of ups and downs but (at least publicly) seems to always manage to land on her feet.)
And don't forget TED talks! If you haven't before, do yourself a favor and set aside an hour or so, and watch a few of these. They're typically 15-20 minutes long, but they are pretty much like Lays potato chips and you can't watch just one. Whatever you're interested in, it's here. You will walk away inspired, I promise.
Finally, the action.
Ah yes, action. This is the part I really struggle with. I get so excited and have so many ideas that I don't even know where to start. I've always been prone to analysis paralysis, but all this deliberation is really kicking it into high gear. The only thing that seems to help me is to take a break from looking at the big picture and just do ONE thing to move forward. I just keep reminding myself that one thing every day has a snowball effect towards my goals.
So that's what I'm working on in 2013. =) What about you? What have you found to be especially helpful or inspirational in achieving your goals and resolutions?
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