Want to make 2018 the best it can be?
Here’s what I recommend: find a theme for the year.
Your theme connects all your goals, resolutions, and actions by identifying one fundamental quality that will help you reach your goals. Possible themes include courage, gratitude, creativity, abundance, love, spirit, power, healing, persistence, clarity, laughter, ease, curiosity, respect, fun… and more.
Your theme reflects how you want to BE and FEEL as you move through your year. Once you have your theme, you approach each day and action from that theme. Achieving your goals follows naturally.
I first used a new year’s theme in 2012. I was recently married and had just found out I was pregnant. I knew there were big things coming that year: buying and renovating a house; moving; leading a team of copywriters in a launch; leaving my intense advertising job to start a coaching business; and of course, growing a baby, going through labor and birth, and becoming a mother. I knew it could be incredibly stressful, and I knew I didn’t want to push through it, straining myself and my health. I wanted it to flow easily. So “FLOW” became my theme for the year.
In everything I did, I tried to flow. And, even I was surprised at the results. I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I moved through all the transitions—and led a copy team in an advertising launch, finished a draft of a story collection, and launched a new website for my coaching business.
There was a lot to do, and there were hard times (including a complicated labor and tough postpartum period ), but through it all, I kept flowing through my life, connected with my heart and supported by the universe and the people around me. I hadn’t expected it to be so effective, but it was. My theme connected me back to the flow I wanted, and everything else flowed from that.
How to create your theme for the year
1. What’s missing?
Look at the different areas of your life (career/life purpose, money, health, romantic relationship, friends and family, personal growth/spirituality, play and fun, physical environment). What is unsatisfying or missing?
2. What do you want?
Now write down what you want in your life this year. What are your goals? Big or small—put it all down.
3. How do you want to feel and be?
Ask yourself: What quality do you need to have to reach those goals? How would you like to feel as you move towards those goals? List all the words that describe how you want to feel and be in the coming year.
4. Choose a theme for the year
Now, look over your list (from #3). Choose one word that calls to you and sums up how you want to be this year. Say your word aloud. See how it feels. Close your eyes and imagine yourself moving through 2018 with that quality. How does it feel? If it feels right, that’s your theme!
(Send me a message telling your theme for 2018. I’d love to know! :-))
5. Live your theme!
Put your theme up where you can see it. Feel it in your body. If you want, you can dance it or create a vision board with images evoking your theme. Most importantly, focus on your theme as you move through each day—embody this quality and live your life from this theme.
Good luck, and may 2018 bring you all the blessings of your theme!!
