On Chasing Yourself

Shannon writes Awash With Wonder, a blog about living intentionally. She takes experiences in her life, looks for the universal lesson in them, and offers them to her readers in the hopes that they’ll learn something too. She also has dual citizenship between South Africa and The United Kingdom but lives in Florida. Follow her adventures on twitter and facebook!

“If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud”
-Emile Zoe

If you chase anything that is not rooted in a truer version of you, you will be so disappointed. If you chase a career motivated by the amount of money you can earn – you will earn a little more sadness, a little more weariness, with every single dollar. If you chase relationships because you hope that someone else’s love with make you lovable, you will find so much insecurity and unfulfilled desire there. You will not find life. If you chase success because you hope that recognition by others will make you worthy, you will exhaust and deplete yourself for people who will only forget you. Or maybe you will live on in the minds of strangers for a few decades after your death, but if you were not finding yourself in those accomplishments, was it worth it? Who are they remembering? In everything you do, everything you ache for, everything you’re passionate about, make sure that you are looking deeply for yourself in them. Success is not the goal; authentic living is.

Your career will not be there to wrap it’s arms around you on lonely nights, but nor will the people who you invest in while you are neglecting to invest in yourself. There are no guarantees in this life but I know, with that quiet clarity that I associate with truth, that to invest in yourself is to invest in living fully. What does this mean? It means I will chase words, and the opportunity to be the one who crafts them, to the edges of the earth because it is part of me. Because there is a deeper part of myself somewhere in there. It means that you should chase the things that leave you breathless, the things that make you come alive, until you cannot run anymore and then you should crawl after them. The important point in that sentence is not  the “things”, it is what those things do for you. Seek life; not the people or jobs or objects that will suck the life out of you.

What is it that you find yourself wanting in the moments when you do not want for anything? The moments when you are not hungry, or tired, or lonely, or even ecstatically happy. In the moments when you just are; what does that deeper part of you still ask of you? Who you are is in the answer and that is always what you should be chasing.

How to Stay Motivated When You Work For Yourself

Today’s guest post comes to you from Vanessa Bowen of Nessbow. Vanessa’s fashion blog was originally an outlet for her to share her eclectic personal style and penchant for alternative fashion but it blossomed into a site about self-exploration, self-care and thepreservation of self-worth from the self described love child of Judy Garland and David Bowie. Be friends with her on facebook and twitter! 

If you work for yourself, you’ve no doubt faced a range of productivity road-blacks. Procrastination, lethargy and burn-out are all barriers to successful self-employment. I’ve spent the last eight years either studying or blogging, and I’ve found a few ways to overcome these pitfalls.

Set daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals.
Create goals that are specific and measurable. I find that it also helps to make several smaller goals to compliment each big goal. Make a yearly or monthly goal, and then plan out what steps you could take daily or weekly to help you to work towards it.

Identify your partner in crime.
A partner in crime is a person who aids your procrastination. If you’re regularly finding yourself distracted by a particular person, it’s time the two of you had a chat. Explain to them that your work is important, and that you need to work without disruptions. Make it clear that it’s nothing personal, and plan to do something fun with them this weekend.

Take smart breaks.
Taking breaks can be tricky. It’s easy to sit down for a ten-minute break and spend the next three hours watching cat videos on Youtube. Plan at least one ten-minute break for every hour of work you do. Even if you don’t feel tired, taking a short amount of time away from your desk will refresh you and help you to work better for longer. If you don’t think that you can trust yourself to stick to your allotted break times, set an alarm for the end of your break and put it on your desk. Make sure that the sound is loud and obnoxious, so that you’ll have to walk to your desk if you want the audio-assault to end.

Be realistic about how much you can do each day.
I often set myself a mountainous to-do list and then lament over the fact that I rarely reach the bottom of it before the day is out. It’s really important to be realistic about exactly how much you can get done in one day. In the morning, choose the three most important tasks and make these your priority. Consider any extra work a bonus.

Change your surroundings.
Cabin fever can start to sink its itchy little claws into you when you’re stuck in the same spot all the time. If you can, set up a workspace in a room other than your bedroom. Also, take your work outside occasionally, to a library, a park or a café if possible.

Be tough, but not rough on yourself.
Sometimes, you might need to give yourself a swift, metaphorical kick up the backside so you can get junk done. However, there’s a difference between being tough and being rough on yourself. You’re being tough when you give yourself a shot of self-discipline for being lazy. You’re being rough when you’re punishing yourself for making a mistake, or forcing yourself to keep working when you’re exhausted. It’s good to be tough on yourself when you need it. It’s not OK to be rough on yourself. Treat yourself kindly, always.

How do you stay motivated when you’re working for yourself?

Senegal-Inspired Hibiscus Iced Tea

Alicia is one half of Humble Foodie, written by and for 2 recent college grads and AmeriCorps volunteers who love to eat but can’t afford the budget to try every new restaurant and type of cuisine. Instead of spending all our hard-earned cash paying other people to cook for us, we’re spending as frugally as possible making delicious meals at home. Be friends with both halves of Humble foodie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest!

One of the many awe-inspiring things about studying abroad in Senegal was the amazing food. Women would spend hours thoughtfully preparing even a simple meal, from washing the rice to simmering sauce through the morning and early afternoon to produce a late lunch of succulent, tender meat. I admired the work that went into the creation of each meal. While I often drank water, Senegalese juices would provide a special treat for certain meals. My two favorites were gingembre, a beige-colored juice with a fiery ginger kick, and bissap, a sweet, refreshing juice made with hibiscus flowers and lots of vanilla sugar.

Rather than making bissap as a sweetened juice, I chose to make it as an iced tea sweetened with raw honey. The light, subtly tangy sweetness of clover honey combined with the tart flavor of hibiscus tea is divine refrigerated or served over ice. I brew the tea with a large amount of flowers to have a flavorful impact, but you could cut down for a lighter tea. It’s a great alternative to soda or sweet tea, and a refreshing beverage to enjoy on a warm day.

It took awhile for me to locate dried hibiscus flowers in the United States, but I finally found them in bulk at a local produce market. They are often sold as Flor de Jamaica, and are dark reddish purple in color. I bought 1/2 a pound for about $2.50, and 1/2 a pound goes quite a long way!

The recipe below is a bulk recipe that I used to make iced tea for Karly’s shower. Below the recipe are notes on decreasing the quantities to make this for just a couple people.

Senegal-Inspired Hibiscus Sweet Tea

3 quarts water
3 ounces dried hibiscus flowers (Flor de Jamaica), appx. 3 cups
3/4 to 1 cup honey, to taste

Pour water into a large pot and place on the stove over high heat. When water reaches a boil, remove from heat. Add flowers, stir, and cover. Steep the tea for 6-8 minutes. Be careful not to leave the flowers in for too long, or they will begin to impart a slightly bitter flavor. I suggest tasting small spoonfuls of the tea as it steeps if it is your first time making hibiscus tea.

Strain the tea into another large pot, bowl, or pitcher. Add honey to taste. I like to leave some of the natural tartness of hibiscus in the flavor, but you can add more than 3/4 cup if you prefer sweet tea. Cool and refrigerate until ready to serve. I pour tea into individual glass bottles or mason jars to take on the go during the week.

Source: This recipe is an Alicia original, but was inspired by the many versions of jus de bissap that I enjoyed while in Senegal.

Quantities: This recipe makes almost three quarts of iced tea, so it’s useful for a party (or bridal shower!) If you’re making the tea for one, I’d suggest cutting the recipe to one quart of water, 3/4-1 cup of flowers, and 1/4 to 1/3 cup honey for about four servings of iced tea.

What the Dress Code?!

Lynne DeVenny is a  senior paralegal in Winston-Salem, NC. After a time running her blog & calling it The Practical Paralegal, giving advice & promotion to the paralegal profession, Lynne noticed that her readers were more interested in budget career dressing. She changed the name of her blog to The GoodWill Hunting Paralegal and now focuses on looking professional on a budget. Be her friend on facebook & twitter! 

I’ve worked at the same small civil rights law firm for almost two decades. We’re blessed to work in a historic home, and we get soda for free. (Don’t scoff. Do you know how much soda it takes to fuel a paralegal every day?)

There’s never been a dress code in any real force or enforced. Employees have come and gone, some so tastefully and beautifully turned out, that no matter what I have on, I feel like I should definitely try harder tomorrow, or possibly the day after, or next Monday…

Then there have been the employees who really relaxed in our beautiful old house, wallowing in free soda, and on occasion, wearing blue JEANS. (If you want start a dress code brawl at your conservative place of employment, just announce, “OMG, Sue’s wearing JEANS! Those aren’t navy blue slacks, those are STRETCH DENIM!”)

So after 20 years of complete sartorial freedom, some of us in the law office were stunned speechless when our new dress code was announced last week. We are no longer allowed to wear jeans. This news was not received well by everyone. Some of the ones that weren’t rendered speechless reacted with an emphatic, “What th’…um, HEEEECCCK!!!!”

But I wasn’t mad. Maybe some of us had gotten rather relaxed or possibly just lax in our work attire. And honestly, even if the new dress code was super draconian and said we could only wear dresses (it doesn’t), I’d be good with that. Over the years (the many, many, many years) that I have dressed for work, I’ve loved looking like I did try harder – by simply dropping a flattering and comfortable dress over my head and running out the door.

After longing from afar for ages, I recently purchased my first Karina Dress. It fits all my rather stringent requirements for daily career wear. It doesn’t wrinkle, or need ironing (like I know where our iron is). It makes me look polished and beautifully turned out, as is, or with accessories. And my Karina Dress feels like jammies. Take that, new dress code!

So I’ll sit back with my free Dr. Pepper and my dress that feels like jammies, and see what happens when the covert jeans action begins. (I’m thinkin’ the first rebel jeans wearer will go jeans ala Clinton and Stacy with a dark denim, great-fitting trouser style. Add a navy blazer, and they will sneak in disguised as a suit.)

Does your place of employment have a dress code? Reasonable or draconian?
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Lynne is wearing her Karina dress with thrifted vintage MIA floral cutout boots, and re-mixing it with a thrifted Frye riding boots.

How To Stay Smart

Spicy Green Skillet for Breakfast, Brunch, or Brinner

Alicia is one half of Humble Foodie, written by and for 2 recent college grads and AmeriCorps volunteers who love to eat but can’t afford the budget to try every new restaurant and type of cuisine. Instead of spending all our hard-earned cash paying other people to cook for us, we’re spending as frugally as possible making delicious meals at home. Be friends with both halves of Humble foodie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest!

You know what rules about being an adult? I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want. This has meant chocolate cake for dinner on more than one occasion…how can I resist when I can make one in the microwave in five minutes? Breakfast for dinner has become another favorite. I’m not sure why breakfast is so much more delightful when eaten at 7:00pm than 7:00am, but a stack of cocoa surprise pancakes or a heaping skillet of vegetables, chorizo, and eggs will always be go-to comfort foods.

Since I’ve committed to completing a January Whole30, a month of squeaky clean Paleo eating, my very favorite chocolate cake is neither in the cards nor on my plate. Instead, I’m redefining treats and finding joy in every meal. Ordinary ingredients become exciting when I know that the meal I am creating will keep me energized and satisfied for hours.

This heaping skillet is packed with protein, vegetables, and healthy fat to meet that very need. Chorizo is one of my favorite ingredients (see, you CAN have treats on the Whole30!) and gives a nice flavor the mix of eggs and green vegetables. The bite of sautéed jalapeños provides a contrast to the creamy inside of crackling sweet potato homefries, which I highly recommend trying as a standalone side dish in another breakfast. Once you pick your basics, swapping ingredients to match what you have on hand is a no-brainer. A spicy green skillet is a quick and easy Paleo, Whole30-friendly meal no matter what time of day you choose to indulge.

Spicy Green Skillet - 1 hearty serving (double recipe and use a larger skillet for 2+)
Total time: 20-25 minutes

1-2 tablespoons coconut oil
½ medium sweet potato, chopped into ½-in. pieces
¼ cup chopped yellow onion
¼ cup thinly sliced green onion
½ jalapeño pepper, seeds and white ribs removed, chopped (about 2 tablespoons)
1 cup loosely packed baby spinach
¼ teaspoon ground oregano leaves
salt & pepper
4 ounces chorizo
2 large eggs
½ avocado, chopped into 1 in. pieces

Melt coconut oil in a 10″ cast iron skillet over medium heat. When the skillet is hot, add chopped sweet potato and cook until tender, flipping only a few times so the sweet potato forms a crunchy, caramelized outer layer, about 4-6 minutes. Remove to a plate.

Add more oil if needed, then add vegetables and season with oregano, salt, and pepper. Cook until onion is translucent, then remove to plate with sweet potatoes. Again, add a bit more oil if needed, then crumble chorizo into the skillet and saute until cooked through. Remove to plate.

In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs until scrambled, then pour them into the skillet. When the eggs have almost finished cooking, add the rest of the cooked ingredients to the pan and scramble. The skillet is finished once the eggs have set. Add avocado and enjoy!

Date Night with Brand Ambassador Cinny

 Based out of New York City and Canada, Cinny is the mommy to JR and Baby Pom. When not working or studying full time, she can be found working on Whirlwind of Surprises or cuddling with her hubby and playing with her dogs. She shines in the warm company of friends and family and  enjoys playing with her 3 little nephews.

Score! This Frockstar has a date night! The SO and I have been so busy lately that we haven’t really made much time for ourselves lately. Since we were headed to Minnesota for a business trip, we decided to have a date night before all the customary business stuff.

I had just the perfect Karina dress for it. I often find myself perusing the Karina Dresses shop online now and when I saw the new limited edition patterns Karina brought in, there was one I had to have. I didn’t care what style it came in, I just wanted it!! I lust over houndstooth pattern items so the blue houndstooth was calling my name.

The wonderful people at Karina Dresses sent me Josie in the blue houndstooth pattern. I couldn’t believe how cute the dress was. Designed like a frock and perfect for this #frockstar, Josie flowed with femininity, draping tenderly over my curves and exuding cute innocence. If you’re looking for a shorter cut Karina dress, then the Josie style is for you. Instead of the typical knee length, it cuts off around 2/3rds of the way down my thigh.

With the dress already picked out, we only had to decide on dinner. Since we were exhausted from a day of travelling, we decided to order takeout from Outback Steakhouse and eat in our room instead. We had steak and even this pretty “Onion Blossom” apppetizer that looked and tasted good. The food was a tad on the salty side but not bad overall. Although we didn’t eat out, it was a nice change from the usual to have a nice, warm, quiet, and romantic evening to ourselves.

Planning Your Daring Adventure

Tara Swiger is a author, maker and Starship Captain. You can explore your creative business + make a map for your year on her site.

As a Frockstar, you are bound to have a fashionably rocking year. I bet you’ve already started dreaming big about the glories of 2013. While dreaming is vital to making big things happen, the real magic comes from combining your amazing dreams with supportive, realistic plans to make them happen.

To mix up the magic combination, take the time to think it through and write it all out (I use Leonie’s Workbook for Life + Business). Take a few days and then do the following:

1. Pick a word or phrase to guide you. I think of it as a kind of lesson plan for my coming year. These words guide my adventures and provide a focus for my learning. Ali Edwards offers a fun class to help you work with your One Little Word all year.

2. Make it doable. Big dreams and lofty plans are delightful, but stuff gets DONE in the daily work of to-do lists + schedules. Make a map (or several) to break your big destinations down into mile-by-mile driving directions.

3. Make a PLAN for support. Surround yourself with people who know how to do what you want to do and people who actually DO what they want to do. If you don’t know many in real life, you’ll have to make a plan for finding the support you need. Don’t just wait for it to come to you! {Don’t know where to start? Check out Sarah’s Network of Nice!}

What have you done to make 2013 a daring adventure? 

How to Review Your Life & Plan An Amazing New Year

Michelle is an expert at finding out how + why something works (and then putting that knowledge to usually-good use), being grade-A curious, & getting things Done with a capital-D. Follow her on facebook, twitter, and youtube! 

I am hereby declaring January a month that is a No Man’s Land and is not 2013 yet, and is really just an extra planning month. (Yes, you can do that over halfway through the month. I checked.) I don’t know about you, but I’m only just now getting to the point where I have the physical, mental, & emotional energy & wherewithal to look back at 2012 and forward at 2013 and plan and dream. I did some planning for 2013 at the beginning of December, but I’ve already changed some of those plans. And I thought, “surely I can’t be the only one who wasn’t prepared to go straight from the holidays into planning the new year and doing it well and then jump right back in to things.”

Hence, this post – a resource for everyone else who feels the same way! It’s meant to be a comprehensive guide that’s whole-life-encompassing, so grab a mug of tea and settle in, my friend.

Goals vs. Resolutions

Kathryn recently wrote a post about goals & resolutions that I think has some good points. I used to be surprised that people made a big difference between goals & resolutions, but I think that’s because my resolutions usually turned out to be goals (just ’cause that’s how I think & all). After seeing the way most people do resolutions, I don’t necessarily think they’re evil, but they should be handled very carefully.

Here’s the thing: resolutions are usually the start of a goal. They’re expressing a wish or a hope or a dream. This is good and is part of the process. But you cannot stop there, because a wish is not the same as action, and a wish doesn’t usually give you a place to start.

For example, when Gretchen Rubin set out on her happiness project, she started with “I want to be happier”. But that’s not where she stopped. After she decided that that was really something she wanted to take action on, she did research into what makes people happier. She came up with a plan – areas she was going to focus on each month, and specific steps she was going to take in each of those areas – and a way of tracking her progress, and kept herself accountable with a public blog.

It’s a good idea to dream and think really big about what you want to do, be, feel, have this year – those are your resolutions. But after you’ve dreamt big, it’s time to come back down to earth & fill in the details so that you can actually start on things. This means taking a resolution that’s vague as mist, and translating it into a measurable, actionable goal, with a plan to back it up.

Making Good Goals

But how do you do that? Let’s use another example. Say you have a resolution of, “I want to feel better physically.” Where you could go with that is figuring out what areas that would involve taking action in – the food you eat and the physical activity that you do throughout your day are two big ones.

From there, you could go further into the food you eat, and decide to do a series of 30 day trials eliminating specific things from your diet, and seeing how you feel without them. (I’m a big believer that there is no “one size fits all” diet and that we all just have to experiment & see what works, so that’s the course I’d recommend, anyways.) Or you could decide to eliminate soda from your diet, or another kind of junk food.

Or you could go further into the physical movement side of things, and decide that you’re going to do 15 minutes of yoga every day while at your desk. Decide that you’re going to walk at least five miles a week. And so on.

We’ve all read that SMART acronym at one point or another but to be honest I can’t tell you what all of the letters stand for (specific, measurable, possibly actionable, and after that I’m lost). As far as I’m concerned, here’s the three most important things to start with:

• Specificity. You need to know what you’re doing, how much you’re going to do, and how often you’re going to do it, and if you have a deadline, what that deadline is.
• Measurable. Again, you need to know how much. Something I am always & forever saying that holds true here too, is that if you don’t know what “done” is, you have no idea when you’ll reach it. Or if you’re halfway there. Or at 75%. That feeling of having no idea where you’re at on the progress bar is incredibly demotivating.
• Actionable. You need to know where to start. This is one of the places where stopping at a resolution can bite us in the ass – something like “I’m going to feel better this year” is great, but where are you going to start?

Resources for creating resolutions + goals:

• How to Map Out Your Product from Inception to Completion, a guest post I did at ByBloggers that talks about breaking things down into actionable steps – could be useful with larger goals
• Resolute Resolutions, a post about getting the proper context for your resolutions so that you can create sustainable ones
• New Year’s Resolutions: A Few Tips From Your Brain
• Play it Forward, figuring out what to do now by figuring out what you want to happen in the future & working backwards
• Setting Yourself Up for Success in 2012 in Seven Easy Steps (And Ginsu Knives)

Breaking It Down Into Areas

If you’re having trouble even knowing where to start with your reviewing/resolutioning/goal process, here’s my suggestion: break your life down into areas. I’m not a huge fan of compartmentalization (read: I believe it’s pretty much impossible and is a silly idea), and I’m sure you’ll notice that there’s significant overlap between these areas, but this is a place for you to start – with sample review questions to get you started and resources + tools to help you out with any changes you want to make.

Work/Livelihood

Shiba Inu not required, but seriously recommended.

We spend a lot of time working. Whatever your philosophy on work is (it should be easy, it should be hard, forty hour work week vs. four, and so on), you’ve got to agree: it shouldn’t suck. Ideally, you feel good about the work that you do and enjoy doing it.

Things to consider:

• Is my work fulfilling? Do I feel like I’m having the kind of impact that I want to have on the world?
• “Fulfilling” means not only satisfying, but developing the full potential of. Am I using all of my potential at work?
• How do I feel when I get done with an average workday? (Tired but happy = good. Exhausted, drained, and upset = no bueno.)
• What kinds of activities could I incorporate into my work day to make it more fulfilling for me? If I’m in a position that I can’t immediately change, how can I make things better in the meantime?

Resources + tools:

• Managing Yourself: What Brain Science Tells Us About How to Excel

For figuring out what sort of work you might be best suited for:

• Strengthsfinder
• What’s Your Type of Career?

Body

If you’re having trouble with your body, it can (& often will) permeate every other area of your life and make you generally miserable. And for many of us, our lifestyle doesn’t necessarily lead to being connected and present within our bodies, and can instead lead to a pretty disharmonious relationship with it. Obviously there’s a lot of aspects to your body & your relationship with it that I can’t fully cover here – I welcome more suggestions in the comments.

(Note: I’m aware the perspective here doesn’t fully encompass individuals with disabilities, who can, depending on the disability, have to deal with a debilitating level of pain on a regular basis. I can’t speak from or for that perspective; if you have any recommended resources, please do throw them in the comments so that others can benefit. Thanks!)

Things to consider:

• Stop and really take stock of your body for a few minutes. Breathe deep and notice. Ask yourself: are there any aches and pains that I’ve just got used to, that didn’t used to be there?
• Keep track of your body for a few days and see what you notice. Recurring headaches? Bad posture when you sit?
• How do you feel after you eat?
• Do you eat when you’re hungry & stop when you’re full?
• Are you mindful of what you’re eating? Do you know what the bulk of your diet consists of?

Resources + tools:

If you’ve got a smartphone, there are so many apps that are useful for this. There’s Nexercise, which gives you “points” for exercising and tracks your exercise, with the incentive of possible free prizes, medals you can earn for specific things, and I think there’s even more it can do (I just downloaded it the other day & started playing around with it, so I haven’t tested its full capabilities). Basically, they “gameified” exercise – totally brilliant.

Other apps:

• Runkeeper, which is not just for running but walking, cycling, etc. – it tracks all of your data so that you can see how many miles you’ve gone in a week or a month, what your best times are, and so on
• Nike Training Club
• Daily Yoga
• This Lifehacker article mentions a few food based apps – unfortunately, from what I’ve found, a lot of the food tracking and diet oriented apps aren’t going to work for everyone, depending on how you eat/your personal diet doctrine, etc. (For example, tracking calories doesn’t do any good if you’re still eating crappy food.)

Non-app resources & tools:

• Gini Martinez is a body genius. Period, full stop.
• Dealing with this side of things can bring up a lot of emotional issues. Mara is a genius when it comes to talking about body-related things and about how we can maintain self-love in our daily lives. I highly recommend her blog.
• Meg Worden & her book Salad Alchemy (which I’ve heard great things about)
• If you’re wanting to further your relationship with your body in other ways, Ev’Yan has got ya covered at Sex, Love, & Liberation.

Spirit

When I say “spirit”, I don’t just mean things like religion or spirituality, I mean a more general sense of your well-being in a way that isn’t quite covered by the labels “body” or “mind”. Things like your happiness levels, how satisfied you are, and so on. Of course, “spirit” also does apply to religion & spirituality, as well

Things to consider:

• Do I feel satisfied spiritually?
• If I go to a church, temple, or other religious group, is it a plus in my life – or is it just a neutral? Do I leave services/rituals/ceremonies feeling happy or feeling blah?
• Does my work affect others in a positive way?
• Do I feel happy on a regular basis? Am I excited about my life and about things in the future?

Resources + tools:

• Consider finding a charity to volunteer at – you can use Network for Good to search for one, and you can also check out VolunteerMatch. If you honestly don’t have the time to volunteer, consider donating on a regular basis.
• If you want to look at different religious and spiritual beliefs, and see what calls to you, do some research on world religions. If you’re living in a bigger city, you can find meetups organized around most any religious or spiritual group, so that you can check them out in person; and if it’s a more organized religion, you can head out to the local temple/church/place of worship and see what goes on there.
• If you want to work on being happier, check out the Happiness Project (which I loved) for a lot of ideas on where to start.

Mind

Boredom: a big fun sucker. (Not very surprising, that.) If you aren’t intellectually stimulated on a regular basis, it can be hard to get interested in anything else.

Things to consider:

• How often do I find myself bored out of my skull?
• Is the work that I’m doing engaging me on a mental level?
• When was the last time I read a truly thought-provoking book or had an incredibly interesting conversation?
• Do I find it hard to focus at work because it’s too easy for me?
• When was the last time I learned something new?

Resources + tools:

• Check out your local community colleges – they often have continuing education classes at a very reasonable price on a variety of subjects. (Austin Community College has everything from German to physics to Aikido!)
• Moonwalking with Einstein is a pretty amazing book – covers a lot of science about memory and not boring at all.
• Get a library membership! You’d be amazed what you can find at the library or get through ILL, and the you can’t beat the price.
• ReadItFor.me is a new thing that looks pretty awesome – I haven’t tested it out but I’ve heard rave reviews. Great for people who want to read more but lead busy lives.

Relationships

Humans are social creatures for the most part. Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, there are very likely relationships in your life that are important to you, and the quality of those relationships is important to your quality of life.

Things to consider:

• Am I honest in the relationships in my life?
• Is there anyone that I spend time with more out of obligation than anything else, and is there a way to do less of that?
• Am I excited about having (person) in my life in the future?
• Do I practice compassion in my relationships, towards myself & towards the other person?

Resources + tools:

• Danielle Dowling is a professional soul sister + relationship remixer, who regularly writes smart Q&A articles on the topics of relationship & dating on her blog
• Mentioned before under “Body”, Ev’Yan’s website Sex, Love, & Liberation is a great resource for here, too
• Loving With Power
• Communication is vital to any relationship, and one of my favorite books on the topic is Fierce Conversations

Money

Ah, money. Very few things (except sex, I suppose) bring up as many conflicted feelings in our society as money. We’re afraid of feeling greedy, we’re worried about never having enough, we have hoarding tendencies, and so on.

Things to consider:

• How does money make me feel? Am I always stressed and fearful of it, no matter how much or how little I have?
• What’s my definition of “enough” when it comes to money?
• Do I know how much money I need to pay my bills, groceries, and other necessities every month?
• Do I know how much money I spend every month – and on what?

Resources + tools:

• Christyna Lewis is a financial coach – this is her area of specialty. I’m going to be working with her soon & I am SO EXCITED about it, let me tell you. If you aren’t quite ready for one on one work, there’s still her blog.
• Tara Gentile has actually written a whole book about this subject (which, full disclosure, I bought but haven’t read in full yet) and regularly writes about it on her blog.
• The Daily Worth, great for its frank money talk
• Adam Baker at Man vs. Debt has a lot of resources, paid and free, on eliminating debt
• Apps again: Lemon is a great and easy to use app to track your spending; PageOnce keeps track of all of your bills & when they’re due as well.

Creating a Timeline

After that review process, you’ve probably got a good view of where you’re feeling satisfied, where you’re not, and where you can start changing things. The next step is to come up with a timeline.

This doesn’t have to be dry & boring – I’ve seen some gorgeous timelines, complete with visual depictions of what would be going on during any given month and milestones depicted as well. It’s very helpful to have an at-a-glance representation of not only what your goals are for each month, but what else will be going on that month (think business conferences, travel, anniversaries, birthdays).

Once you’ve blocked out the events that are going on each month, try and figure out how your goals relate to those events and the rest of the year. It’s probably not a good idea to attempt to move several thousand miles in the same month that you get married if you want to stay anywhere in the realm of level-headed (ask me how I know this).

If you’ve created measurable goals, you’ll be able to “stair-step” them – break them down into smaller chunks that you can focus on, one at a time. For example, if your goal is to run a marathon in October, you can use a regular running habit to reach that goal; starting with running five miles a week, moving up to ten, and then fifteen, and so on. Figure out where each stair-step goes time-wise, and put that on your timeline too.

Staying Motivated & Making It Stick

Okay, so you’ve got your goals all planned out, your 30 day trials are in your timeline…what next? Maintaining the motivation & actually making your new goals and habits stick.

To stay motivated, it’s really useful to know your “reason why” for a specific goal or project. What drives you to do it? Is it curiosity or something deeper? Sometimes our motivations are external (my parents want me to), sometimes they’re internal; external motivations are not always bad but can be more difficult to keep up, and it’s important to be aware of & recognize where the motivation is coming from.

Another handy thing is to know what excites you about each goal. We often start on something with all of the enthusiasm of a five year old at a birthday party, only for it to fizzle out later. If you’re consciously aware of what excites you about a particular goal or project, you can remember it and come back to it later to rekindle the fire.

When you’re working on making your habits stick, you need to remember that willpower is a very finite resource, and relying on nothing but willpower is why many attempts to add new habits or stick to a resolution fail. My philosophy is that we can & should use other things to support our habits so that our willpower is a last resort instead of a first defense. For example, you can get an accountability buddy, who has a similar goal to your’s, that you check in with on a regular basis. Or you can modify your environment to support your goals – adding reminders of your new routine and your motivation to it, and removing temptation (if you don’t want to eat gluten? throw out the flour!).

This is where it’s a good idea to put most of your effort – on planning how, exactly, you’re going to make your lifestyle changes sustainable. An unsustainable change won’t stick around, in which case, all of the tools in the world can’t help you.

Resources for staying motivated & making it stick:

• The easiest tactic to actually make that habit stick in 2012 – a post from last year on how you can use habits you already have to add new habits into your day
• How to Spam Yourself to Success (Okay, so it’s an odd-sounding headline, but really, check the post out! Some great ideas.)
• Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump
• How to Stay Motivated

And that, my friends, is how you plan an amazing year.

What’s your planning process look like?

The World’s Sweetest Graffiti?

Sarah Von Bargen writes a lifestyle blog, Yes and Yes. By day she is a copywriter/blogger-for-hire/internet awesome-i-fier. She wants to see the world, save the dolphins and read The New Yorker while wearing cute outfits and eating bon bons. You too? Be friends on twitter and facebook!

Being a total neat freak, I am one of those people who usually gets righteously indignant and harumph-y over graffiti.

Wait, let me qualify that: I get wound up over poorly done, unattractive graffiti. But if we’re talking about clever, deft, well-done graffiti? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Have you ever happened past a bit of lovely, inspiring wall-art? It will brighten your face every blessed day that you walk past it, I promise. I would love to rush past these to pieces on my way to work every day.

Reverse graffiti appeals to the neat freak in me. ‘Vandals’ selectively clean parts of walls that have beencovered with years of dirt and grime, making for white on black scenes. Ingenious, no?

And have you guys heard about moss graffiti? Cheeky guerrilla gardeners use this recipe on brick and cement walls to create gorgeous, clever pieces of mossy art like this:

Do you have a favorite piece of graffiti in your city? Would you ever engage in a bit of inspirational vandalism? I would!