Happy New Year

Friends, we survived the end of the Mayan calendar, and are soon to turn over yet another new year. I have a fair amount of hatred for New Year’s resolutions, but I love doing something to celebrate the year that has passed and to form dreams for the upcoming year. If you’re looking for alternatives to resolutions, check out these ideas!

Reflecting on 2012
I love this idea from Cheryl Richardson’s book, Life Makeovers – to begin the new year by taking some time to reflect on how you have changed and grown in the last year. Her idea is to list out twenty five things you are proud of having accomplished over the last year. I would also add to this – experiences you want to remember, ways you have grown as a person, dreams that have come true or been born. I love doing this at the end of the year to celebrate and remember.

Toasting
Jill Badonsky talks about creating toasts for your everyday life, and I love adapting that to creating a toast to your last year. It’s easy – write down a list of twenty to twenty five things that were important to you in the last year – the good, the bad, the ugly. Then, create a toast by arranging them and adding “Here’s to” in front of them with any descriptors that work for you. I often add books, movies, and music that I fell in love with over the year as well. It’s even easier than it sounds. I’ll do a mini example for you here from my own year:

Important Things
-starting my own business
-falling in love
-joining a twelve step program
-Brandon Sanderson
-receiving an energetic healing

My First Stanza Draft
Here’s to 2012, to the electric fear of being an entrepreneur,
To wild ride of unrequited love and the journey it led me on,
Here’s to the painful joy of finding the next healing path,
And the shortcut offered by the sisters of my soul.
Here’s to escaping it all in the world of Kaladin.

Word of the Year
I heard of this idea from one of my friends, so I am not sure if there is a source I should be citing for it. The idea is to pick a word that embodies what you want to experience for the upcoming year. Note of caution here – choose carefully! It can be truer than you expect. I chose “erupt” last January, and I’m still reeling from a year that fit that word perfectly.

Vision Boarding
In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, she suggests creating a vision board that bypasses our standard left brain thinking. The idea is easy (and fun!) – choose several magazines, get a poster board, glue and scissors. Set a timer for twenty minutes and rip out any image that grabs you. Once the timer’s up, stop, grab your board, glue, and scissors. Then, set the timer again for twenty minutes and trim the images, arrange them on the board, and glue them. You might be surprised by what you create!

Creating an Intention
If you insist on creating a resolution, you might like this idea – change it into an intention instead. I learned the art of creating intentions from Inner Feng Shui Coach Vicky White, and fell in love with the process. The idea is to write an intention, beginning with the words “I am in the process of…” and then listing your intention. Vicky’s test on whether the intention was “right” was, “does it make you want to leap out of bed in the morning?”  To do this, I always found it fun to get into the why of my initial intention.  Let’s do a common resolution as an example:

Resolution: I will exercise more in 2013.

Goal Focused Resolution: I will exercise for at least forty five minutes, three times a week in 2013.

Intention: I am in the process of adding more movement to my life, allowing my body to play, stretch, and grow stronger in order to enrich my vitality and embrace physical pleasure.

I don’t know about you, but the resolutions make me want to sit in a chair and play video games. The intention makes me want to dance!

Wishing you an amazing, joy-drenched, magical 2013!