Have you asked yourself where are you going in 2016? Not in regards to travel or vacation but in regards to your life from a personal perspective of your family, health and career?
As we move along into January, most everyone has established a resolution, word of the year or goal. Regardless of what perspective you have chosen, I encourage you to ask yourself where are you going on this new path you have chosen.
Goal setting and new habits can be wonderful tools but at the core we all need to consider in what direction this journey called life is taking us. Last year, I wrote the piece about existing or living because I was becoming aware of my own habits of going about my day to day life but forgetting to live it. This is a fact of life that we each struggle with at times but we must remember we have the power to stop what can become the dullness of everyday life and exist.
I’ve been choosing a word of the year for the past two years and a few months ago the word Direction kept coming to me. As in the past, with my focus upon hello and thrive, this word kept appearing to me in my thoughts, in songs lyrics and almost everywhere I went. After consideration, I easily understood why direction needed to be my word of the year.
Although my private practice and career has continued to move along (and it has thrived as I wanted it to in 2015), a difficult fall semester of teaching found me falling into existing and in some ways just keeping my head afloat. Somehow, my practice continued to grow without significant work from me but I wasn’t growing as a clinician and I wanted to do more in regards to speaking and trainings but had no time or energy.
Over the past two years, I have been blessed with opportunities in regards to employment as I healed from my grief and reevaluated where I wanted and needed to be. I described the past two and a half years floating. I was keeping my head above water as I worked through the pain and loss but I was not placing much effort into where I wanted to go. The reality is my grief was taking most of my energy until late last fall when the word direction kept showing up. The universe was telling me it was time to refocus my energy and that I was ready.
I have had dreams and goals but I was putting limited energy into achieving them for multiple reasons. Life was telling me that 2016 needed to be the year of direction. I needed to know and remind myself where I was going? What was I going to be doing and how was I going to do it?
On Friday, I shared the journal exercise of imagining yourself in one year. Write how you would see yourself if you achieved your goals and also write how you would see yourself if you do not achieve your goals. This is a simple exercise of putting forth where one is going. If you do not envision the end result, it can be impossible to get there.
Tweet This2016 is the year of direction for me. I must take some time to look at this journey I am on and decide where I am going. After all, I have control of what I do with my career. I have control of the food I eat and the time I exercise and I have control of where I decide to place my energy. Only I can decide where I am going.
Where are you going in 2016? Have you decided how you are going to get there?
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