It’s the New Year. If you’re anything like me, you have a lot of aspirations for yourself. Maybe a lot of things you’d like to do, places you want to be, business goals you’d like to reach. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stagnant, without clarity of where to even begin. A lot of times our dreams feel like burdens when we aren’t taking consistent steps towards them and falling prey to the distractions of life. We all know time is the most valuable thing we have. And ultimately how we feel is about how we are spending our time.

If we don’t take action and make time for ourselves, chances are we’ll feel anxious and depressed, which comes from feeling out of control. We feel like life is happening to us instead of the empowered truth, we are creating our realities moment by moment. And where we put our attention is where we are putting our energy. And where does creation begin? In energy. Let’s put the energy in motion towards living your best life, shall we? Out of pressure, they say, comes diamonds.

It’s time to take back the control and craft a kickass, inspiring blueprint for 2022. Ready to get started?

What does success look like to you this year?

I want to offer an interactive journaling exercise to set your 2022 up for success, whatever that may mean to you. I want you to be sitting here a year from now going, hey, I feel really good about my year and my accomplishments.

We are going to start with a visualization exercise, and then refine it into practical steps. Overwhelm is the antithesis of action and often times all we need is to get our amazing ideas out of our heads and onto a piece of paper so we can really see it clearly. With a little bit of organization and time, all of our dreams and goals can be executed upon.

First I want you to take a minute to close your eyes and connect with your breath. I want you to go to your favorite meditation space in your home and take a moment to relax your body into the cushion. After a few minutes of connecting with your breath and tuning in to your body, I want you to contemplate the following:

“Where do I want to be in my life experience this time next year?”

“What do I want my ideal day to look like? Who do I want to be with?”

“What do I want to accomplish this year and how do I want my life to look?”

Let the pictures come in and let your mind dance around all of the exciting possibilities that are waiting for you to tap into. Now I want you to ask the following questions:

“How do I wanna feel next year?”

“What do I want my everyday routine to feel like? Do I want to feel more connection, relaxation, or productivity?”

Breathe into those feelings and just sit with it for a few minutes. Maybe this is the year you want to become a digital nomad and work remotely anywhere in the world. Maybe there’s some desire to finally get started on the business idea you’ve had in your head this year and haven’t done anything about. Maybe there’s a strong desire to start working out and cultivate a consistent exercise routine that really suits your schedule. Maybe there’s a desire to get your financial situation in order and begin educating yourself around budgeting. Let the feelings drive this. You want to feel at peace in your body, you want to feel secure financially and prosperous. You want to feel energized and inspired to create. Keep those feelings with you as we journey through the rest of the exercise.

Turning Potential Energy Into Motion

Now it’s time to begin journaling and get these ideas from your head onto a piece of paper. Open up your favorite journal or just get a new piece of paper where you can write freely.

First write at the top of the paper, “I feel , , __” Future project yourself into the experience you just saw during meditation. For the sake of this exercise, you could write, “I feel confident, stable, and abundant.” Present tense it and begin to watch it come to you. Let this be your guide throughout the year and keep returning to the feelings.

Now I want you to write down everything you just saw for yourself. All of the dreams that you want to make a reality this year. Free write them without correction. This isn’t about precision just yet, this is just about getting it out of your head and onto the paper.

Fill up the paper with all the things you want to achieve by 2023. Write without restraint, all of your dreams are valid and obtainable. Curious about the energetics of manifesting? Check out my post on the law of non-resistance.

Now you should have a big list of some realistic and some not-so-realistic ideas that you have for yourself. You should have some vision of how you want your life to look this time next year in 2023. You should be feeling really excited and also a bit overwhelmed because you’re like, “how the hecccck am I going to do all of these things and where do I even begin?”

Bite sized steps, my friend. Little daily habits make the magic happen.

Draw The Future To You Now Through Feeling

Now in a new sheet of paper, let’s get to work and see how we’re going to make it happen for you. Revisit that sheet of paper you just wrote your ideal life on and pick the most important thing to you. If you could only do one of these things, which one is the most important that you would say “this was a really fulfilling year!”

Write it down again at the top in bold what you want. Now, future tense it. Affirm that you have it now in your current reality. “I am so happy and grateful now that I have XY&Z” Again, “I feel , , now that I have __”

Create Small Actionable Bite Sized Steps

Start writing the steps that you need to take to get to your goal. Make it actionable and break it down until you have bite-size steps for each project. Let’s take the example of budgeting and forecasting your finances as a business owner. You want to feel secure, stable, and abundant.

What do you have to do to get there? Give each step an estimated amount of time that feels reasonable. It might be the first step is

• examining current spending habits (1 hour)
• make projections of how much you need to live each monthly comfortably (2 hours)

Then you may need to…

• research a budgeting software that works for you (40 minutes).
  
  Break that down even further:

• search YouTube videos (20 minutes)
• search Pinterest blog posts (20 minutes), and time each activity.
  
  Make sure you’re estimating time so you can schedule it into your week, and then days later on.

Continue making your list until you have all of the steps written out. The big steps that are unclear is where we stay stuck. But when you get to the big confusion of stagnation, sit with it and say, how can I break this down so I gain clarity where clarity is lacking? Often it’s educating ourselves on what we don’t know. Maybe your steps look like “download audiobook from amazon on personal finance”

Maybe the next step would look like:

• create a budgeting framework (2 hours)
• log daily expenses (5 minutes)
  
  Some will be one time steps, some will be recurring habits that you will repeat daily. Highlight the daily reporting steps with a symbol or a color that you can easily refer to late when scheduling your weeks.

You’re almost there!

Keep doing this until you have all of the steps listed out with times next to them so you know exactly how long and what you have to do next. Start crossing off each item as you begin embarking on this journey of crafting your vision and watch the momentum gain.

Go back to the first list you created and do this step-by-step for each dream or “goal” you have for yourself. Now we’ve created a no excuse list ready to execute for the new year.

Mapping Out Month by Month

Now I want you to draw a grid with the 12 months January 2022 to January 2023. And I want you to write and which projects you’re going to embark on each month. You will see you have more than enough time if you schedule in each projects monthly, and break it down weekly, and break it down even further daily.

The goal is to have a visual of actionable steps you can take each day and track them throughout the month until you’ve reached your goal. At the beginning of each week, (Sunday is a PERFECT day for this) create your schedule for the week. Start with the non-negotiable routines you have set for yourself. Also include commitments and obligations like work, and appointments.

In between these things, delegate chunks of time in your day to complete these tasks by the amount of time you have available. Maybe you have 3 hours on Monday between 12 – 3. Pick a project and schedule in that time for going down your list of steps. You’ll begin to get momentum around this and it won’t feel so hard to start, because the clarity will be there of exactly what you need to do.

Your dreams are valid. Everything you want is on the other side of time management and fear. Today is the perfect day to begin, and every day you will be creating little habits towards your big vision.

Comment below your intentions and dreams for 2022! Share your list on Instagram and tag me @ce.hall so I can share it.