Not long now!
Achieve.
What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.
This prompt seems like hard work...cos it is I guess. I couldn't make too much sense of why this was a thing that I should do given that I do an elaborate goal setting for each year that both Michele and I invented for ourselves umpty dump years ago...with this in mind I decided to explore the person who actually provided the prompt and to see what prompted her to formulate the prompt in the way she did. Below is a synopsis of her blog entry explaining and promoting Tara Sophia Mohr's ideas and here is a link to
her blog.
Underneath every goal, there is a desired feeling. Why do you want to run the marathon? Because you think you’ll have a certain feeling when you do, that you’ll feel strong or triumphant, or whatever it may be.
Our goals are instruments. Our brains say, “To get that feeling, go do x. Be y. Acquire z. Complete this. Win at that. That thing out there – that experience or credential or moment will give you that feeling.
The problem: Experiences rarely change how we feel. Psychology research now shows what most of us have experienced anecdotally: life satisfaction cannot be correlated with external achievement, and we humans are very bad at predicting what will make us happy.
Want to feel healthy, and think that being in tip top shape will help you feel that? Fine, get in shape, but also start feeling healthy today. Yup, today. What would you need to do, what would you need to think, what kind of choices would you need to make, to feel healthy right now?
Whatever feeling you think your long term goals are going to give you, what if you got really serious about experiencing those feelings week? Today? In this moment?
Of course, there’s a reason why we don’t do this: it pushes us to take full responsibility for our state of being. It means letting go of the safety that comes with feeling dis-empowered, insecure, trapped, bored, stuck, and instead stepping into the more vulnerable territory of finding love, choice, aliveness in this moment. A part of us wants to run for the hills. And another part knows this is where real freedom and real peace lie.
Having read all this I decided it was even harder work than first anticipated. I can't think of any one thing I want to achieve next year... other than the year itself. Perhaps this has to do with not being in my 30's any more and not needing to achieve a lot more as I feel I have done a lot and don't have the room for driving ambition.
The feeling I would like to achieve in 2011 is the feeling happiness. So here is the 10 things brainstorm..
- Project development. This past year our happiness project had a process to it but the wheels fell off along the way, at least near the end so I think getting that running again will help the exploration of happiness. Today I should revisit our Happiness blog and contact the team
- Visiting- plan and visit of family, friends and places both virtually and really. I'll skype family later today
- Photography- take and publish photos via blog, scrapbooking or the walls. Post the photos from the blizzard here.
- Projects- keep those projects of mine up to date- so better sort out the "creating space" today- it got moved to accommodate the Christmas Eve dinner.
- Take purposeful walks to commune with nature and my environment. Weather permitting head to Central Park later and this will link in very nicely with #3 and #4!
- Order in my life and environment...tidying up the place does make me happy so perhaps once I have got the tings back to my creative space I will feel better about the state of my room.
- Kindness- this I think is going to be my mantra for the year 2011 and so I want to develop ways in which I can be kind to others both in thought, word and action- sounds a bit like my first confession really- Tara Sophia talks about silencing your inner critic- I don't think I have listened to my inner critic frequently enough at times and at other times I listen far too often getting that mix right is the challenge.
- Food makes me happy it also makes me unhappy- so eliminating the unhappy food (the junk and the comfort food) and eating at the right times will help ensure mood balance. I was given a great couple of cook books for Christmas so being serious about cooking with them is a good plan I think- and so to today... select and organize the ingredients for one such recipe.
- Challenge and achievement- thinking things through- writing about stuff either with my writing buddy, or my blog or my art journal- this is getting one piece of that done today and I feel happy about that but is feeling happy happiness?
- Taking a shower! Simple and easy to achieve.
I'd better get cracking today looks like a busy one! But first the blizzard aftermath shots from yesterday mornings very brief walk around the block
Hurley's across the road from our building
Miguel and the snow blower outside our building
Looking up Broadway from 48th Street
The sign above the doorway at Colony
Who ya gonna call?
A bus stuck on 8th Avenue- do idea how long it had been there but there were icicles on the back and the driver inside with the engine running. Michele quipped perhaps the driver had to "go down" with the vehicle?
Looking along 49th Street- no idea who the person is
No deliveries, no bread... one of the reasons I ventured out was for eggs, milk and bread- luckily I could get all of them despite these empty shelves.
Michele and I watched from the window and the warmth as these poor souls tried to get this car into the parking at the Crowne Plaza- it got stuck as it tried to turn into the parking area. We got bored but they worked hard and had even more incentive when other cars began hassling them as they wanted to travel along 48th Street and couldn't with this car sticking out over the "drivable" area.
One thing towards feeling happy down another 9 to go.
