In the mad crush that is a typical December for most of us, I am also thoughtful about next year. I’m sure you are, too. My to-do list beckons (always with the lists, I am), which includes 2018 planning. How do I want to handle my coaching business? In what ways do I want to grow, adjust and/or stay the same?
As I think about planning in my former life, I kept some fairly strict categories – work planning was completely distinct from any health and wellness planning, for example. And I rarely reconciled cross-category impacts. I was always aggressive about planning for work and what I wanted to accomplish, and typically less attentive to how I’d fuel those accomplishments with creative insight, health, energy, and perspective. I focused on the output of “doing” and a lot less on the pleasures and rewards of being on the journey.
In my “new” life, I have discovered the power of noticing, for example, how my thinking gets narrow (and rigid) when I’m sleep deprived, or how my morning workouts create a momentum of success. I’m better able to come at my goals from how I want to feel as I accomplish them and, especially, once they are accomplished. Said another way: I try to feel my way to my “compelling whys” and outcomes.
As you consider planning for 2018 and the pressure to figure everything out in advance, try something a little different. Imagine 2018 is going, and has gone, as well as it possibly could: what does that look like and how do you feel in that picture? If you’re not sure how you’ll feel, zero in on how you want to feel in in the year ahead? How do you imagine you’ll feel in your body when you are having the year you envision?
Use that picture to embody that persona now (I call it “channeling my future self”), and let that ‘future self’ help you move towards your goals and away from the things that constrain you.
A good helping of paying attention to your limits and needs is also very useful. How do you define enough at work? How much sleep and recreation do you need and want? Do you have enough creative and/or spiritual time? How about relationships and social engagement? Taking care of yourself on these fronts is the fuel for your best performance at work.
Although in the past I’ve been more likely to use a linear planning process (lists, lists, lists!), I find the process of picturing and feeling my end state to be so powerful. For example, I want to be graceful and flexible while I grow my coaching practice – both at the individual client level as well as the macro business level. The notion of being flexible brings to me the sense that I can be at my best in all areas of my life. That then informs how I then decide what’s on the docket for the coming year, and in what orders of magnitude.
My wish for you is to carve out a little time for mindful day dreaming in the weeks ahead. (The mindful part is simply noticing where your thoughts and dreams go so you can pull the noticing into consideration.) An added bonus will be some mental down time from the December crush. Notice what activities compel you and which ones you’d rather avoid; jot notes and write down the words and phrases that call to you and reflect your inner dreams. (Mine – so far – are writing, painting, coaching, public speaking, joy, color, movement. What are yours?)
We will always have things to put into our planning that we’re not personally crazy about, but we can wrap those unpleasant non-negotiables in the unique power of our future selves, who can also guide us to do the things that bring us alive.
And if working with me would be helpful – I coach and support people who are trying to pay attention to themselves through the accumulated noise of life and work – let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
Susan