Every year between Christmas and New Years I curl up on my office comfy chair with a nice hot mug of coffee, my laptop, and some soothing background music and spend some time reviewing my wildly ideal life so that I can set up the year ahead to be the best yet for me, my family and my business.
It’s a process I thoroughly enjoy. I believe it is essential to staying aligned with what I truly want for my life.
It’s a part of my 7th Principle of Thriving Health; Adherence. It’s not only a once a year thing like most people’s new year’s resolutions. It contributes to living life consciously.
Annually I reconnect and adjust my big picture. I reset the map. Then I set sail to act in alignment with my renewed map. I live my wildly ideal life. Rather than waiting another year to reset the map and risk falling way off course I check in often through the year.
Smooth Sailing on the Ocean of My Wildly Ideal Life!
Small periodic adjustments of my life’s rudder allow me to continue to sail smoothly on the oceans of my wildly ideal life. Small periodic adjustments enable me to easily handle the storms that occasionally come along. Next year at this time it will be a relatively small adjustment and evolution of my ideal life map, not a wholesale rebuild!
Begin now with your own annual review and your experience of your life will become very similar. Here’s a simple framework to follow.
I use three stages I call the 3R’s to set up the next year to be the best yet.
Phase 1: Reflect.
Begin by looking back over the past year. Looking back enables you to see what worked and what did not. It brings it to your conscious awareness. See the unhealthy patterns with your lifestyle that you fell into. Identify influences from your busy life that tended to get in the way or become excuses for falling off track. Connect with the stories you told yourself to rationalize a lifestyle you were not all that happy with.
Answer these two questions honestly and openly.
- What were my 3 greatest accomplishments related to my health this past year.
- What were my 3 greatest challenges with living a healthy lifestyle this past year.
Phase 2: Renew.
Embrace and celebrate the great choices you made for your self last year. While it is easy to beat yourself up over the factors that knocked you off track shift to acknowledging the need for having those experiences so that you can now clearly see the lessons you were meant to learn from those challenges. Now in a positive light you are in a great position to shift your old patterns to ones that will support you. Renew your commitment to your self in the year ahead by answering the following question.
What are my top 3 goals or experiences I want to create in living an active, healthy, and happy lifestyle in the year ahead?
Phase 3: Rocket.
Rocket into action. Keep on doing and reinforcing the things that are working. Begin to evolve each of them so they support you more and more. Create a plan to break old unsupportive patterns and habits and replace them with positive actions. Schedule it! Take baby steps. Celebrate your successes. Don’t beat yourself up over slips. They happen to all of us. Instead stop, learn, and choose a different action. Take more baby steps. Then take bigger steps and even bigger ones. Let each of those steps take hold in your busy life before you add new ones. Seek support. Support helps make it stick. Gradually you’ll be rocketing into the results you deserve and desire.
Check out my book Make It Stick as it goes into much greater detail about assessment and adherence.
Check out my Creation Circles for a system of support professionally designed to guide you in your process of living your wildly ideal life, each step of the way.
Here’s to your health and happiness in 2012 and beyond!
Brent
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