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“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” – Proverbs 29:18
We’re 7 days into March, the month that should be all about crushing my 1st quarter goals, but instead I feel as if my goals and everything else in my life are all crushing me!
Lately, I have felt so uninspired and this has hampered my ability to write and blog. Because I help the women of See Jane Write with this issue all the time I know exactly what my problem is: I lack vision.
There’s something special about having a birthday in the second month of the year. If you’ve had less than a happy new year, if you’ve broken resolutions or failed to accomplish your January goals, your birthday becomes your second chance. Your birthday becomes your do-over.
Today, February 9, is my birthday. Today begins my second chance at 12 months of excellence.
Today I turn 36 and as I wrote in my Write Like a Girl column for B-Metro, at first I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this new age. You see, 36 is not a milestone birthday, but it sure feels like one as it officially declares me closer to 40 than 30. Does this make me old? I wondered. Does this mean I’m “over the hill”? Was 35 “the hill”?
But, I’ve decided that only I can define the prime of my life, so, I will take 36 and have the time of my life.
Here are 36 things — both personal and professional — I want to do while I’m 36:
February 1st is here. We’re an entire month into 2017 and, unfortunately, I spent most of January feeling completely overwhelmed. And it was all my own fault!
My 2017 goals, the same goals that in December filled me with anticipation and excitement, in January started to fill me with apprehension and trepidation instead. I made a list of all the tasks I needed to complete to accomplish my January goals but the list was about as long as I am tall! And I knew exactly why. I wasn’t following my own advice, the very advice that I gave the ladies who took my e-course, The #GoalDigger Project. I wasn’t staying focused.
I call it The Virtues Project.
Every year in the Early American Literature class that I teach, I assign my students a project for which they emulate Benjamin Franklin’s renowned self-improvement project. In his Autobiography, which we study in my class, Franklin details his attempt to “arrive at moral perfection.” Franklin made a list of 13 virtues and a book of charts to track his efforts to maintain these virtues perfectly.
Franklin’s project went on for many months, but I challenge my students to pick 7 “virtues” that they will track for 7 days. They usually pick bad habits they want to break like biting their nails or cursing or good habits they want to adopt like exercising and eating vegetables. It’s so fun to read about their results!
But I recently realized that I could use a revised version of Franklin’s project to keep myself on track for 2017.
This will be the year I believe in magic.
This will be the year I dream my wildest dreams and wholeheartedly believe that each one of them will come true.
Believing in magic doesn’t mean I will work less. This will be the year I hustle harder than I ever have before. But this year I will accept that sometimes hustle isn’t enough. Sometimes you need magic.
And magic is that place where gumption meets grace.