Winter is a wonderful time for reinvention. With the new year approaching, it’s an apt moment to review the year that was and plan the year ahead.
Here are some suggestions for updating your Intentional Life Plan for the coming year. If you don’t have an Intentional Life Plan, now’s the time to develop one! Order your copy of “Write, Open, Act: An Intentional Life Planning Workbook” today.
1. Reflect on the year that was
- Look at your Intentional Life Plan and what you accomplished in 2017. Check off life goal Sticky Notes that you achieved. Celebrate what you did!
- Create a bulleted list of your 2017 highlights. Create the list by going back through your photo library* and writing down all your key moments.
- Go through your diary or journal for the year, as well as your calendar, to add other key moments. Think back to other important events, milestones and personal/work/family accomplishments you might have missed, and add those.
2. Assess
- Relish what you accomplished and feel the moments you had! Talk to your partner, spouse, best friend or yourself about what you see.
- Reread your 2017 life goals. Which ones are remaining, and what blocked you from accomplishing them? Do you want to move them to 2018 or another year? One of our workshop alumnae moves her life goals that are no longer relevant to the bottom of her Intentional Life Plan just so she can go back and think about them.
- What crossed your mind during this look back about what you want to do with your life ahead? Did anything get your juices going or your heart fluttering?
3. Plan
- Add life goal Sticky Notes you want to achieve in 2018 and beyond. Evaluate your new life goals and whether they meet the S.M.A.R.T. goal formula.
- Prioritize your life goals for the coming year. What do you want to do in each quarter? Create action steps for each life goal. Discuss with yourself or your partner.
- Go through each goal and make it actionable. What is the first step? Second? Third? Who does what? When will you start? This is key: If your goals aren’t actionable and don’t have steps, they won’t get done.
4. Systematize and calendarize
- Add your goals to the tools you use to keep track of your monthly or daily tasks/goals.
- Schedule on your calendar a repeating monthly appointment to review your life goals. Invite your best friend, spouse or partner to join you in your planning.
- Add the further changes you’ve made and update your Intentional Life Plan.
We humans are such a resilient species—we can always keep striving to improve and live our best lives on this planet.
Have a fantastic year, and enjoy your next trip around the sun!
*Two of our Intentional Life Planning workshop alumnae suggest making a 2018 calendar with your 2017 month-by-month highlights on the corresponding months so you can remember throughout 2018 what you were doing a year ago. iPhoto, Vistaprint and many other services offer calendar photo collages.
