We’re back and excited about 2018! As promised, we want to kick off the year with you by sharing our word(s) and also giving you a behind the scenes view of our New Year’s process.
Your Word for the Year
We each pick a word for the year to provide a big picture essence of what we want to create.
For me, Susan, my word is COMMUNITY
I picked community because of the many meanings this word has for me.
As defined by Webster’s: a unifying body of individuals - such as
a. the people with common interests living in a particular area
b. a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger
society the academic community
c. a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and
political interests
I love that the definition includes so many aspects of community that are significant in my life: you in our tribe, where we live in Whitefish, MT, where we teach at The Haven and Martha Beck, our Facebook friends, as well as our friends and family.
Though community also means to me creating an internal unified body of individual parts. I’m always working to have compassion and purpose for ALL of me, not just the ‘good’ parts, but the angry and scared parts of me as well.
So, community is the word I want to embrace—both the community inside of me and the community outside of me in 2018.
CrisMarie here, my word is PLEASURE
If you remember last year I wrote a couple of pieces about this: The Pleasure Project and Women Are Biologically Designed for Pleasure.
Growing up in a male dominated culture, I learned to ignore how I felt, work hard, be efficient and achieve. I quickly eliminated pleasure and play, and all the natural feminine qualities associated with it: sensuality, sensitivity, emotional expression, and going slow. That is until I read my favorite book yet on women empowerment, Pussy. I know, provocative title, right? Powerful book!
I’m now convinced that the more fun, pleasure, and play I engage in, the more money, health and quality relationships I’ll create. However, it’s not entirely natural for me. So, I need a reminder. Thus, my word—Pleasure.
Now, for our business, thrive! we’ve picked the word FLOWERING
Flowering, to us, is about enjoying, celebrating, and allowing our efforts to continue to blossom and bloom.
We’ve been sharing our message through our blogs, Get Unstuck, Find Your Mojo in Montana , and the release of our book, The Beauty of Conflict.
CrisMarie’s Coaching has taken off. We absolutely love leading Couples Alive and Come Alive. All of these are we now part of our thrive! garden and we want to continue to see these grow, as well as toss seeds out into new places and in new ways!
Plus, doesn’t the word Flowering tie nicely into our feminine focus for 2018?
So, our words provide us a big picture and a felt sense for what we want to create in 2018!
What’s your big picture word that’ll create a focus for you, or is the essence of what you want to create in 2018?
Behind the Scenes:
So, we’ve got the words and we have the big directional piece. However, for us, that isn’t always enough to launching us into living our words to their fullest potential. We like to pull from the wisdom of others and create our Mandala, a tool we teach in Get Unstuck, for the year.
First, we loosely started with Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map. Though we didn’t follow her process completely (since it’s long and we’ve done it before) we like starting with feelings. She has you identify the feelings you want to experience first. Then, plan what you want to do, have, or experience to feel those feelings. Because no matter what we do we’re always doing it to feel a certain way.
We like that.
Here is the approach we used, which you can try yourself.
1. Identify the key areas of your life. For us it was:
- Relationships
- Work
- Health
- Wealth
- Creative Expression
2. Identify how you want to feel in each area of your life. Brainstorm this. Let yourself really sink into how you’d love to feel. For example, in my work, I want to feel: passionate, purposeful, inspired, creative, valued, curious, engaged.
3. Across the different areas, look for the similarities, patterns of feelings, and group them. Look up the words in the dictionary. See what they mean to you. It’s most important that they make sense to you.
4. Narrow it down to three to five feeling words. These are your Core Desired Feelings.
5. Deepen the process by asking the question: “If I were feeling (fill in the blank) in my work, what would I be doing, having, or experiencing in 2018?” This gets you to your goals in each of the areas. This relates to the Mandala, which we’ll talk about later.
These core desired feelings are what you’ll use day-to-day, month-to-month, and quarter-to-quarter, to bring your 2018 word to fullness.
Our feeling words:
We’ll be using these words in our planners on a daily basis. These Core Desired Feelings will direct our actions each day.
Building Our Mandala
Finally, we designed our thrive! Mandala, which is our magical Get Unstuck tool. (Now, I, CrisMarie, have to comment here. Every time I’ve used our Mandala tool for myself, when Susan and I have taught Get Unstuck, my life has changed dramatically for the better. I love it!)
The Mandala is designed to provide you clarity for the both the outer actions and measurable results you want to create, as well as, ensure your inner well-being is taken care of. (CrisMarie again. I think I’ve always been focused on the Actions but not so much on the Self-Care or Support. By including the Support areas I keep my gas tank full to accomplish the Actions.)
We’d like to show you our thrive! Mandala. If you want to learn more and use this tool to create magical results for yourself in 2018, join us for our next Get Unstuck class starting January 30th. Watch your world change for the better.
Summary
All of this is fun, playful and purposeful for us. We’ve enjoyed making this part of our holiday experience and now sharing it with you.
Let us know what your word is for 2018 and, of course, how you want to feel brining that word to life! We’d love to help and support you making your 2018 all that you want it to be!!
Hugs,
Susan + CrisMarie
P.S. Stay tuned for my planner process. Spoiler Alert: I bought 5, yes 5 different ones. Are you wondering which one you should use? I’ll give you a pros and cons list on each one so you know!
P.P.S. Want to make sure you get traction on what matters most to you? Join us for Get Unstuck starting January 30th and running for six weeks.
CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke are Master certified life coaches, business consultants, speakers and authors of The Beauty of Conflict. They believe real relationships are the key to creating great business results. They’ll take your team from mediocre to great.
Interested in coaching? Check out CrisMarie’s executive coaching and personal coaching, or Susan’s personal coaching and equus coaching.
Want to take a class? Sign up for one of their virtual classes: Get Unstuck, Relationship Mojo or come to their signature retreat Find Your Mojo in Montana. Click here to check out all their service offerings.
Click here to contact them to coach with you, consult with your team, or speak at your next event.
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