At the turn of the year we are always encouraged to make a plan for the coming 12 months. Review the past year, everyone suggests, and write out your plan for achieving goals in the new year.
Usually, when we hear this teaching we assume writing is involved. But we also tend to think of it as a mandate, enslaving us to a pre-determined merciless work schedule that is intensely and ceaselessly focused on success and achievement.
Planning can be creative and incomparably helpful. But many of us avoid it in favor of spontaneity. Others don't like the work involved: thinking, writing, intentional imagining, spending time on it. Some ask, Who knows what the future will bring? If I don’t know what’s going to happen, how can I plan?
I suggest trying something a little different this New Year. Whether you habitually write out a plan or not, use your journal for the job, in the following way:
1. Use one of your journaling sessions to ask questions like,
- What picture of the coming year would make me happy?
- This time next year, what will have happened over the previous 12 months?
- What really good thing would I like to experience in the coming months?
Let this be a relaxed, casual journaling enjoyment, not a cerebral strategy session. The important thing is to be true to your authentic desires.
2. When you’ve finished the journal entry, go do something entirely different, like take a hike or go shopping or cook a meal.
3. Do not re-read the entry or even try to remember it at all. Let it lie fallow for several months at least.
For that matter, you don’t need to refer back to the entry ever. Once you have done the imagining and the handwriting the signal is sent, the magic is set in motion. The year will unfold and – if you have been as truly yourself as possible in that journal entry – it’s likely that you’ll see many parts of your imaginings become manifest.
It happens like this because you have consulted with your inner self and then expressed the response in writing. When you “put it out there” it has a far greater chance of becoming reality; and this is true whether you work up a formal plan or simply do a heartfelt journaling session.
I’d love to know if you’ve tried this way of journaling for planning, and how it works for you. Please share in the comments here and/or on our Facebook page.
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