As we launch ourselves into a new year and new decade there’s a great deal of discussion, energy, and excitement about developing a vision for the next 10 years. Where do you dream of being in 2030? Who will you be? What will you create? In the coaching community, tools, exercises and challenges abound. They are being distributed in blog posts (like this one), newsletters, Instagram posts, Facebook conversations, and workshops.
I love visioning, dreaming, planning and strategizing. I love to imagine, build and create. I’m a goal setter and list keeper, even my lists have lists : ) I love creating vision boards. I’ve spent the past 5 years on personal and professional development which has included lots of visioning. I have worked with individuals and teams to explore and create visions for their future. And as a member of a CTI Leadership Program Tribe, for the next year I am committed to a continuous intensive process of reflection and creation, honing my life purpose and my leadership stance, stake, quests, and capabilities in service of creating and realizing a greater vision for my world and my place in it. I’m in!
However, as I sit here in this New York City apartment, 130 blocks north of where the infamous Times Square ball will drop in just a few short hours, I find myself wondering why I’m not particularly inspired to create a new grand vision today. I’ve been wondering why I feel exhausted every time I read someone’s attempt at inspiring this activity? Is it fear, inertia, lack of imagination, lack of courage? Could be. But on reflection, right now I’m just finding these exercises “supposed to's,” and a mere artifact of the calendar and that fact seems to be more depleting than energizing for me in this moment.
As I pondered all of this I found myself wondering if perhaps I just spent 10 years digging, seeding and watering the garden. Perhaps the seeds I planted in the 2010’s are poised to sprout in the 2020’s and my job is to find some quiet shade and watch it sprout. Is this a cop out, and easy way to poetically avoid powerfully claiming my future, and building the one I want to create and live? It’s always a possibility, but I’ve decided NO. I have decided that instead of forcing a new vision with a bunch of words around it today, I will do this:
Give myself an inquiry for 2020: What is needed right now, in this moment?
Set an intention: Joy
Live R & R:
Reading & wRiting - Read a book per month & Journal every day
Rest & Relaxation – self-care including more sleep, more spa time, more meditation and more dates with myself, practicing regular time outs away from to do lists, activities, have to’s, and screens
Reflection & Recreation – more attention and doing more fun things that I love to do
So with this, I welcome you the next decade and to join me in creating your own inquiry, setting an intention and living R & R. And I will leave you in your choice with regard to visioning your 2020's and to decide what you need right now. If it’s developing a grand vision for the next decade, GREAT!, (and of course I would be more than thrilled to support you in a visioning journey). And if it’s something else, GREAT! Make a choice, own it, and put your everything behind it.
Happy New Year!
© poem and drawing by Lynne Bernstein