“Dear Santa,
This New Year I ask for your support in receiving three simple things:
Appreciation
Wholeness
Perfect Timing
Thank You!”
Appreciation for myself
This Year the preparation for defining my 2015 goal list has began in July and has taken many different forms. Lots of books, training, brainstorming sessions with my friend (thank you Cristina!) until I came with this final version. I realized that what I needed this year was to keep things simple and develop strong positive habits.
I am constantly dreaming…… some old dreams are abandoned, others recurrent which are carried from year to year, popping up from time to time, becoming more like a burden or getting stronger and powerful, ready to emerge and become real:
Getting organized, being connected to people, calling every week my parents, bungee jumping, being good parent and a model to my children, enjoying the small moments of happiness (Lidia’s SMOH), eating healthy food, repair my blender and make raw recipes, creating and keeping an exercise routine, taking yoga classes, parachute jumps, offering more often compliments to my husband, taking swimming lessons, learning Japanese, visiting new places, trying new food, things, being creative, showing to my kids that LIFE is WONDERFUL …………………….
I received an interesting peer feedback for a goal designing exercise for the course “Better Leader, Richer Life” held by Stewart D. Friedman, University of Pennsylvania on Coursera: Are you aware that you can get a bit overdressed or overwhelmed with so many changes at the same time? Have you thought of prioritizing one or two experiments which can have a better overall impact…? It reflects exactly what I was feeling lately about goals and why I could not get done all of it, despite all corporate training and readings I have gathered.
And then I have decided that in order to build a castle, I need a strong and reliable foundation, which for me in this particular moment is Appreciation for myself.
My self-esteem is high because I honor who I am – Louise Hay
When you feel worthy, it is easy do offer love, support and happiness to others. Self-acceptance brings you the wings to fly, the will and power to make your dreams coming true, to enjoy the Momentum, dissolves fears and obstacles.
Wholeness, integrity and creativity
The second goal came forth after experiencing lots of conflicts when applying traditional educational principles in children education and I got lots of inspiration from Stewart D. Friedman who defines so perfectly the need to be whole, real and creative when it comes to all 4 domains (family, career, personal self and delicious community). A small innocent example with candies: Kids, candies are bad for your teeth, health……says a well-intended parent who is hiding on the highest shelves in the kitchen the sweet delicious moreish chocolate ( yes, I learned a new word which best describes chocolate – Moreish). Adjusting your core values to all areas and people around you will give you true peace and power.
Perfect Timing
The last small wish is related to the discordance I feel regarding procrastination, punctuality and bad synchronization and it comes along with the consistent action taker habit (you can find more on S.J. Scott’s site about developing good habits). I feel bad when I am late to work and I forget to give a big hug to my kids at the kindergarten, when I rush into the train station and have no time to smile to nice people around me, when I am following the routine and feel tired and abandon priorities…….Starting now I want better Timing for all good and positive.
More about action plan, habits and result metrics next month. Meanwhile I found some interesting apps and tools which are pretty interesting and accessible in tracking goals:
7 Apps to Help You Achieve Your Goals and Build New Habits
Lifetick – my favorite one, which gives you the possibility to edit values, create lists of dreams, goals, personalized tracking, charts, sharing goals, easy to use and user friendly.
Until then I like being within the 3% of adults have clear, written, specific, measurable, time-bounded goals, and by every statistic, they accomplish ten times as much as people with no goals at all, as stated Brian Tracy.
These numbers whether real or not have been helping me a lot when I stubbornly reached some challenging goals in the past. One of them was the thought that only 3% (this is a very common figure, right?) of smokers succeed in quitting after a year of nonsmoking. It feels good to be that exact Successful person!
What about your goals? Did you already defined and wrote your dreams, goals, wishes?
Merry Christmas!
Some of the books and authors which inspired me this year:
Brian Tracy, The Unbreakable Laws of Self Confidence
Tony Robbins, Personal power
Esther and Jerry Hicks, The Law of Attraction
Louise Hay, 101 power thoughts, I can do it, The power is within you, Self-esteem affirmations,
S. J. Scott, 23 Anti-Procrastination Habits: How to Stop Being Lazy and Overcome Your Procrastination
Stewart D. Friedman, Leading the Life You Want:Skills for Integrating Work and Life
Tamara Miles, The Secret to Peak Productivity: A Simple Guide to Reaching Your Personal Best
Oprah & Deepak’s 21-Day Meditation Experience
