"New Year, New You!"
"Get a Fresh Start in 2017!"
"Resolution Revolution!"

These are just some of the headlines that appeared at the beginning of January this year. Some of them have shown up so often every year that they've become a cliché. But where are you in this last week of January of 2017? Are you a resolutions kind of person? "This is the year I get in shape!" "This is the year I finally shed those 20 pounds!" "This is the year I get organized once and for all!" Or are New Year's resolutions not your thing? Or perhaps, you've already thrown in the towel. According to social lore, the third Monday of January is nicknamed "Blue Monday," in part because it's by then that most people have given up on their New Year's resolutions! 

 

I feel your pain. I definitely needed some motivation and some revitalizing this new year. I realized about a week ago that January was almost finished, and I was still floundering. Slogging through my days with no real goal in sight. At just the right time, an email from my friend - speaker and coach Elizabeth Hagen - hit my inbox. It was a day-long workshop designed to clarify my goals through creating a vision board. Now, I'm not really an arts and crafts kind of gal, and vision boards were not part of my repertoire. But I was feeling VERY stuck, and ready to try something different.

 

By the end of the day, I was revitalized and ready to go again. While creating the vision board was the end result, what happened during the largest part of the day were exercises designed to help us figure out and clarify our goals for the year. No namby-pamby, wimpy, vague statements allowed. Only intentional actions, with definable results permitted. Both big dreams and small were presented, but all with a specific plan of action. And all were written down, in black and white, before we even considered looking for images to support them. One of mine was to spend more time writing. But that wasn't specific enough. The ultimate, specific, intentional goal written down in black and white: "Use the time I would ordinarily spend trolling Facebook to write - a cumulative total of about 30 minutes per day." That involved the intentional steps of taking the Facebook icon off of my phone and removing it from the bookmarks in my laptop, and scheduling real time into my daily schedule to sit down at my laptop and actually write. 

 

Intentional. Specific. In black and white. I believe those are the keys to defining and ultimately achieving our goals. There are many ways to go about it - the SMART goal system comes to mind (S=Specific, M=Measurable, A=Attainable, R=Realistic, T=Timely). John Maxwell's book, Intentional Living, is also an inspiring and motivating resource. Putting your intentions in writing is definitely empowering, and is a great way to hold yourself accountable as these long, winter days crawl by. A vision board can be a powerful daily reminder of those goals, but even just posting your written goals in a place where you can see them every day can be a wonderful motivator, too.  

 

Here's my vision for 2017: