We set goals and intentions, create vision boards and get into life planning : do they stick? does it work?
Are you on track this year to accomplish what you decided you wanted to accomplish this year? This month? Today?
If you set “New Year Resolutions-Goals-Intentions” now is a good time to whip them out and see where you (& I) are at..!
If you are not motivated or excited by your intentions- rework them. That need to “work out” might get done if you decide to dive into a really fun sport or alternative form of exercise (surfing is a lot more fun for some than… say… 30 minutes on the treadmill) and get into that? Perhaps your desire to write a novel (yes, my friend, you know I am talking to you) would get done on a gradient if you committed to writing a page- one single page- every single day- instead of waiting for the perfect writing class. Even writing crappy pages will ultimately move you toward the discipline of writing… and out of it may come something very surprising?
If things are not moving fast enough for you, assess your methods. Maybe its time to get up earlier and work on your paintings so that the day doesn’t encroach upon your creative time? Perhaps you need a specialized teacher or need to hire an expert to get you past the obstacles based on what you simply don’t know? I tried to build my own website- and that wasted a good long time before I hired talented people to set it all up.
Make sure you are being constructive. If your goals and intentions require you to be sleepless, run down or overly imbalanced (IE: if they leave you single minded, only having one focus in life) you might want to backtrack and start covering the basics in your life first so that you can have stable success in your endeavors. There’s nothing wrong with wildly passionate long hours of work, as long as you eat, sleep, socialize and exercise too! If your goals require deep suffering, they may not be goals, they may be a bit self-destructive. I am quite the expert in self-destructive goal setting, having done it most of my life. It took a really talented cognitive behavioral therapist to tell me to “stay out of my own way” and “take care of myself first” to finally understand that the unrealistic way I was tasking myself was completely unproductive. So, I will pass on his words: “stay out of your own way, ” and “take care of yourself first.”
Celebrate your wins! I thank Milton Katselas & his book Dreams Into Action for this one. If you don’t reward yourself for amazing accomplishments and personal victories, you may peter out before you get to the finish line. Big dreams have lots of small triumphs along the road to their realization. If you keep telling yourself “its no big deal” when the little (but big) things get done, it will become increasingly more daunting when the stakes get higher. Celebrate along the way. It will give you lots of energy and motivation and will tangibly remind you that you are doing awesome stuff!
& Ditch what you no longer really want to do right now. In December it seemed like a good idea to take a cross-country trip in the summer, but it sounds terrible now. You may have similar “it sounded good” things lingering on that list. Take them off your plate and file ‘em for later. The more clear you are and the more excited you are the more likely you are to be celebrating a complete victory!!!
Are your own New Year Resolutions sticking? Are you ready to recommit- like I am- to things that aren’t going that well? Lets do it!!! xoxo Dana
Written by Dana Claudat
My name is Dana Claudat and I am the feng shui mind behind The Tao of Dana. I am a Stanford-educated Art Historian, a certified Pyramid School Feng Shui consultant and an insatiable writer and designer.
While I have had the great honor of feng shui’ing some of the coolest people in Hollywood and many superstars of the art world, I am thrilled to work with the future stars in their universes, creative spirits around the world who I have been able to feng shui thanks to the magic of the Internet.
