I dug deep to celebrate and reflect on 2017. Now it's time to set intentions for 2018. I've narrowed it down to three themes to help me in moving this forward.
1. Stand up, stand out, leap into my light
I've spent a lot of my life supporting and adding to other people's great ideas. While I still really love this and will continue to do this for my nearest and dearest, I really need to shift to being the person whose ideas are moving forward. This work began in 2017 with Kind YYC, but it's time to keep it moving. So what does that mean?
- Next evolution of Kind YYC – I don't just want this to end with the 33 acts of kindness last November. Stay tuned for Kind YYC's next evolution.
- Sharing my blog and writing more broadly – I've had an auto-post going to Twitter for awhile. Twitter is so noisy though, I find it's easy to get lost within it, which is one of the reasons I started there (less scary). I'm going to aim for at least 3-5 posts a week to share on Instagram. I've already started this a little and will continue. I'm also going to look for opportunities to submit blog posts or compilations of multiple posts to other platforms (like this opportunity from the mission).
2. Foster a grounding practice
Making sure that I'm anchoring into my strong roots rather than being pushed around too much by the outside world. For me that equals taking time to centre. This comes from reading and feeding and pushing my curiosity.
This means stepping up my reading game. I think I read about 18-20 or so books in 2017. I'd like to step that up to 26 in 2018, which means a book every two weeks. I also have a backlog of Udemy course I want to complete. My goal there is one each month or twelve this year.
The same way I've created a discipline around my blog, I want to create the same discipline around this time. Scheduling it in and hopefully even finding some friends who may want to be a part of this together, even if we are reading/learning different things.
3. Protect my energy/health
I feel like for too much of 2017 I got lost in other people's energy. I didn't put enough boundaries on my efforts, I gave too much away and carried things that weren't my responsibility. My tell-tale for this is when I notice I'm favoring consumption over creation. I'm most joyful when I'm creating and I need to protect the energy for this. In 2018 it's all about ensuring that I'm serving from a full cup. That translates into three things:
- Protecting time for my health – One of the reasons my energy got so low and I was feeling so off is because I really let my health go in 2017. I prioritized far too much before my physical well-being. This year I'm going to protect the time for exercise three times every week and make sure we're being great meal-planners to set ourselves up for success.
- Trying out a different kind of linchpin – In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin sets out two linchpin archetypes. One says yes to everything and somehow amazingly accomplishes more work then one person should be able to. The other has laser focus on the most important work to be doing and says no to all of the distractions. I've been the first one my whole life. I have a really hard time saying no, always feeling like I'm letting folks down. What this last year really brought home to me is that it's not often my best service to be that yes person. It's definitely how I ended up feeling so drained and used-up throughout many parts of 2017. In 2018, I'm going to practice having the courage to say no.
- Know when to play the moon – I have a lot of strong opinions. I also pride myself on being able to see when something could be better. My achilles heel with that is I have trouble letting go when improving or being responsible for something isn't my work to do. This year I'm going to strive to reflect the truth of the situation (not losing my voice) and to then release the outcome when it is not mine to steward.
Being a Force for Good 