A Brand New Year!

It is well known amongst my friends and family that I’m not fond of winter. Yes, that is an understatement. You can keep your snow; I’ll take warm and sunny. Thank you very much. However, despite the fact it occurs during winter, I do like the start of a new year. A whole twelve months stretching out before me, unsullied by mistakes, neglect or ennui. Ever the optimist, I am always able to envision a year in which I achieve my goals and end the year with a sense of satisfaction.

I’ve been thinking about 2010 the past couple of weeks and what I’d like to accomplish. I’m not ready to list them here right now but I will share a bit about how I go about setting goals. First, I start by listing the various areas of my life. Some of these include:

• spiritual life
• relationships
• health
• intellectual pursuits
• organizational tasks
• creativity
• volunteer work/social justice/community involvement

I then select a few goals in each area. One thing I learned in nursing school is that goals must be measurable. For instance, “get healthy” is too vague. How will you know if you’ve met it? More to the point would be something like “blood pressure reduced to recommended level”. Then I list the steps required to achieve each goal. In the example above, one of the steps might be to get into the habit of taking a particular supplement every day.

Next, I pick a few of the listed steps for my goals to focus on. It’s too much to try to tackle everything at once. I also like to start with some of the easier steps. As they say, success breeds success. One of my blogging friends likes to divide her year into quarters and picks goals for each three month period. You can read about it here. I really like the idea of re-evaluating things every three months and I’m going to implement that myself.

Over the course of the next week, this blog will undergo some changes. I’ll be discussing my goals and projects for the coming year. There will also be some changes to the sidebars, including lists of what I’m currently working on and updates on progress. There may be some design changes, too, because David bought me Paint Shop Pro for Christmas and I’ll probably use my blogs to practice what I’m learning. If you read my blog via Facebook or in a reader like Google Reader or Bloglines, do click on through to the blog itself occasionally because there will be some items of interest other than the posts themselves.

In the meantime, here are some of the quotes I’m writing in my journal to inspire me in 2010:

“When you realize who you really are, you understand that nothing can stop you from becoming that person. ~Christine Lincoln

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems…for all that is life.”~J. Krishnamurti

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”~Alan Cohen

 

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”~Oprah Winfrey

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.”~Chris Morley

“Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you can make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.”~Thomas Carlyle

 

“One ought, everyday at least, to hear a little song, read a good

book, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few

reasonable words.” Goethe