End of Year - Goal Planning - Mission Statement II

As I threatened in a previous post, today I’m going to write more about my end of year process, and although I planned to break this down in more bite size pieces, the year is getting away from me.   Use what you like, leave the rest.  It is, after all a buffet (insert Auntie Mame reference here).

After I finish with my “Values” list, I move on to “Roles”.  Each of us performs many different functions or roles in our everyday life.  They might be Mother, Spouse, Sister, Daughter, Employee, Boss, Designer, the list could go on forever.  I used to try to really cover every single role that I play in my life, but over the years I’ve tried to just think about the roles that are most important to me at that particular time.  The constants have always been mother and wife, but the others change from year to year.   This year the top of the list is Self - I know that I need to make myself a priority for 2009 - as the old adage states, “if mama aint happy, ain’t nobody happy” and I see the truth in it.  So, let’s use “Self” as our example.

Role: Self
People who relate to this role: Me

And again, as with “Values”, I write a clarifying statement to set my intention.  I might state: I make time to care for and nurture myself, my interests and my needs.  (That is in fact what I wrote this year)

Another Role might be;
Role: Mother
People who relate to this role: Travis, Haley
Statement: I make sure that my children have what they need to grow into the incredible human beings they’re meant to be.  You can flesh it out a little more, stating specific things you want to do in regard to this role, but I found that I know exactly what I’m doing differently in 2009 for my children - so this was sufficient.

Again, really all I’m doing is setting my intention, putting down on paper the things that are important to me, that I want to focus my attention on in the coming year.  I’ve limited myself to six roles this year.  There could be hundreds, but I tend to be distracted easily, so I’m trying to keep it simple.

The next step is my personal favorite.  It’s the Be, Do, Have list and many different practices utilize this list.  Basically you break the page down into three sections: Be, Do and Have. And you start listing things.  First you make a list of all the things you want to “Be” - really go crazy, explore everything that comes up, do you want to be a rockstar? a politician? a writer? content? admired? fit? happy? spiritual? spontaneous?  Whether it’s a career choice, a hobby, or just an emotion, list them. When you’re done, move on to “Do”:  Do you want to coach a basketball team?  Run a marathon? Campaign for a candidate (or be a candidate)?  get a part in a local theater production? learn Portugese, learn trigonometry, again - whatever your heart desires.  When you’re done with that, move on to “Have”: There is no limit here - we’re talking about the goals that you’re vocal about and the wishes that you don’t even say aloud.  A new dishwasher?  a jet? a big, fat, healthy retirement account? privacy?  10 minutes alone at the end of each day? a meditation room? studio?  I can’t stress how important it is to only write what you really want, not what you think you should want, or what someone else tells you that you have to want.  This is about you.

I save these pages from year to year and going over them, you’d be surprised how many things on these lists I have achieved or are close to achieving - Call it whatever you want, the law of attraction, or determination, whatever… this practice really makes a difference.

The last step I take is to sit down, quietly with all of this information and reread it, really paying attention to everything I’ve written over the last few exercises and I construct the year’s mission statement.  My mission statement looks different every year.  Sometimes it’s a long missive that I read whenever I feel the need to - sometimes its 10 lines that I hang up on my bulletin board, but every year it’s the basic road map to my goals. Your mission statement should look however you want it to look - there is no wrong way.  (I think I’ve said that before).

This year is my eighth year doing this and I’ve gone from strictly following the Franklin Covey plan to creating my own rituals and questions and thoughts. Putting things down on paper, or typing them in a word processing document has made all the difference for me.   I think sharing this publicly might become part of my yearly ritual - it has made me feel this process even more deeply than before.

Again, let me stress that I’d love to hear from you about what you’re doing (leave a comment or use the form if you prefer a little privacy), or if you’ve used some of these ideas on your journey. I truly feel like 2009 is going to be a great year.  It might not be the most financially abundant year we’ve ever had, but that might not be so bad.  Maybe there are other lessons to be learned this year.  I know, for my family it’s giving us the opportunity to look at the other ways in which we have abundance in our life.  My wish is that you find abundance and peace in your life as well.

Inauguration

There’s so much to blog about today, but I’m going to break it down because it’s all so unrelated.

First of all, no matter who you voted for, you can’t deny that our President Elect and his team are by far the savviest web politicos to date.

If you’re going to follow the inauguration - you can rely on twitter.  Obamainaugural will keep you updated on what the Presidential Inaugural Committee is doing. There’s also twitterer Barackobama but that hasn’t been updated since the election results.

If you’re Iphone crazy, like me there’s a free app to keep you updated on all the inauguration ceremonies, activities and festivities.  I can’t help but get swept up in these history making times and I’m not alone, if you Google Obama Inauguration you get 15,100,000 results.

These are some very interesting times and I, for one, am glad that we have so many avenues of media at our disposal.

Who Me?

look! I’m on Alltop! It’s all the way at the bottom of the category, but I’m there. Yay me! Yay Alltop! Just yay.

End of Year - Goal Planning, Mission Statement

I wrote a few weeks ago about the process that I use every December to see how far I’ve come and light the way for the coming year. I wrote that I would share some of that with you, so here I am again.  I do have to start by saying that a lot of this, I got from other sources, predominantly from Franklin Covey. There are forms that you get with certain packages from them and that is where this tradition started for me.  I have changed some of it, to suit my purposes, but I must give credit where credit is due - so thank you Ben Franklin and thank you Steven Covey.  You could purchase one of the FC starter kits and follow it yourself.  Just make sure you get a package that includes the “Starter Pack”.  If you do that and you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.  I’d love for this to be an ongoing conversation.

Ok, first thing - I take last years pages and I re-read them - of course I’ve done that a few times over the course of the year; you’d be surprised how many things I “forget” that I wanted to do and how many other things I feel a burning desire for in December and come March I can’t imagine what I was thinking - so I tweak and change as the year goes on.  It’s definitely a process and sometimes my goals and desires change and that’s ok too.  No, it’s more than ok, it shows that I’m fluid, that I’m changing and therefore growing.  And that’s what we’re looking for here. So with the previous year’s statements fresh in my mind, I take on the first task which is “Values”.  Basically what I’m looking for are the values that are important to me.  Not the ones that I think should be important, or the ones that I think other people think are important, but the ones that truly are important to me.  There are no wrong answers here, I’m just looking for the values that speak to me - to the person that I want to be.   A couple of mine are:

1. health
2. spirituality
3. creativity
4. compassion
5. education

Then I take each of those values and write a “clarifying statement”, just so I’m real clear to myself about what I’m looking to accomplish.  That statement can be anything that speaks to me - that makes me say “Yes!” when I think of that value.  For example… Education.  My clarifying statement for education this year is “I am always willing to participate in a learning experience.”  Simple.  It doesn’t need to resonate with anyone but me.  I’m setting my intention this year to always be open to learning.  For myself, my children, my family, friends, etc.   Obviously as a homeschool family, education would be a value that we, well value… “But Christine,” I can hear you asking, “can education be considered a value?”  Doesn’t matter.  I’ve decided it’s a value.  And again, can I stress this more?  This is only about me.  What I think, what I feel what I want.

This year I have seven values listed.  You might have three, or ten it doesn’t matter.  It’s your decision.

I hope that this might be of value (get it?  Value?) to someone. In a couple of days, I’ll write about the next step which is “Roles”.  Let me know if you’re playing along, either in the comments, or use the form in the “contact me” section, the link is up there to your left under the butterfly, in the middle column.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s a treat from last year.  My ever dramatic daughter (don’t know where she gets it from!) reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Turn up the volume.

Next Page »