197. New Year Planning and Bonus
January first. On this day I START thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t finish them until January tenth. That’s just the deal I set up for myself several years ago. And the advantages of it are that I feel I have time, time to tinker with the goals for this year (I use “goals,” not “resolutions), time to mull them over, time to figure out where I want to try to head myself in the coming 365 days.
I spend the first five or six days of January just jotting down ideas—helter skelter on a piece of paper, no 1-2-3-4 or a-b-c-d, just ideas scattered around the page, sometimes with circles around them. Then by January 7, I look at the page more seriously and try to pick out 10-12 things I really want to do in this year. Some of them are professional; some of them are personal; some of them are a little of each, but by January 8th, I have my list of goals for the year.
The last two days, January 9th and 10th, I start breaking them down into what I can get done on each goal in January (which by now has only 21 days left in it). Each month after January I look at my goals on the first of the month and write down new steps that I can take toward accomplishing my goal in that month. And through the year, they get done—one by one, step by step, goal by goal.
That’s my process and I love it.
Now here’s the bonus—a prayer for this new year:
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God of the New Year
—
Oh God, of this new year,
guide me in its starting.
Stay with me in its middle and the year’s end.
Infuse my days and moments
with love and laughter,
with times of doing nothing
and times of doing everything.
Help me stop when I need to and just
breathe.
When I need to keep going
but really want to stop
give me the energy
to persevere in going on.
Help me be resolute
in new beginnings.
Help me keep dreaming
and fill me from head to toe
with hope.
Amen.
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© Copyright 2012 by Ann Freeman Price
