The joy factor

Vision board for 2011

Almost every time I do a vision board, I think “ooooh… this one is my favourite so far!” That’s how I felt last night when I completed this one. I love it. It’s the biggest one I’ve done so far (I wanted to think BIG for 2011), and it’s colourful and beautiful and MINE.

There is something so gratifying about seeing your vision appear in this way. I think it works for me for a number of reasons:

  1. I’m a visual thinker. Give me images and vibrant colour and I’m a happy girl. I can get lost in an image without necessarily needing an explanation.
  2. BUT I also love words. (I’m a writer, after all.) I like to flip through magazines to see which words jump out at me and offer me some frame for my life at the time.
  3. I love to combine images and words and then watch what the combination evokes. AND I love surprises, and there are always a few of those when I put words and images together in new ways.
  4. I am comfortable with ambiguity. I don’t need to know what every image or combination of words means when I glue it on the board. Sometimes it just speaks to me and the meaning appears later.
  5. I like evolving, fluid structures. I don’t enjoy being hampered by boxy things like “strategic plans” or “business plans”. I prefer to watch the way my vision boards evolve, with changing colour themes, imagery, words, etc.

Some of the things I see so far in 2011’s vision board are:

  1. running – this is the first time I’m whispering it aloud, but I really want to run a half marathon!
  2. joy – my word for the year
  3. growth – exceeding my limits and expanding my horizons
  4. travel, adventure, journey (those things always seem to appear on my boards)
  5. leadership, sacred space, wisdom
  6. variety, options

This type of visioning speaks volumes to my Sophia heart. It’s the wisdom that flows from me when I am true to myself.

For years I tried to fit in a world where strategic planning and corporate vision statements and agendas and action items and objectives and goals felt like stiff wooden boxes that didn’t fit the soft curve of my heart. Though I became adept at adapting to that world, it never felt like my full truth.

Not that those things aren’t necessary – it’s just that they weren’t fully balanced with the wisdom of the feminine.

Now I’m looking at the world differently. I’m looking for the curves and circles, the organic ways of growing, the spaces in between the cold hard facts, the colour behind the black and white, the softness in the structure, and the joy factor.

This year, as I look ahead to my first full year of self-employment, I’m focusing on the joy factor. Instead of a business plan, I’m working on a “joy roadmap”. Instead of a vision statement, I’m creating a “joy image”. Instead of goals and objectives, I’m asking “what things will make my heart feel alive?”

Do it with me! Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. List five moments from the past year when you felt deeply joyful.

2. What was it from those moments that contributed to your joy and how can you replicate that in 2011?

3. Who were the people who surrounded you in those moments and contributed to your joy? How can you continue to surround yourself with these joy people?

4. Create a vision board, adding images and words that make you feel joyful.

5. Answer these questions:

  • I am joyful when…
  • I can bring joy to other people by…

Now go back and read your answers to the questions in #5. Are there intersections? Is it possible that the things you do that bring you joy are also the things that contribute to other people’s joy? I suspect so!

Joy is contagious. Go out there and find some. And then pass it on.

To you, our next generation

I marvel at you all
the way you have grown
into such
beautiful
intelligent
unique
funny
creative
remarkable
individuals
I delight in
your silliness
your kindness
your wisdom
your gentleness
your energy
your hopefulness
I want so much for you
a world filled with beauty
a life filled with hope
a future full of possibilities
buckets full of peace and contentment
and fulfillment and goodness
I hope that, in your life, you will
shower the world with your giftedness
find beauty wherever you walk
seek justice
love mercy
walk humbly with your God
go ahead
be silly
be brave
be scared
be hopeful
be weak
be authentic
just be.
be yourself
and remember
you are loved
you are special
you are needed
you are gifted
you are strong
and you have each other
and us, the ones who walk before you

The word for 2011

I’m choosing JOY this year.

I’m choosing to focus my energy on what brings JOY into my life.

I’m choosing to surround myself with my JOY people.

I’m choosing to build my business around what brings JOY to myself and others instead of just what makes the most strategic sense.

I’m choosing to bring more JOY into the way I parent my children.

I’m choosing to seek JOY in my marriage.

I’m choosing to extend JOY to the people I teach and mentor.

I’m choosing to let go of the things that get in the way of JOY.

I’m letting JOY be the filter through which I make decisions.

As I mentioned in my last post, this past year has had more than its fair share of heaviness and sadness and change. Indeed, all of those things have contributed to my continued growth and transformation. But at the end of the year, I realized that it had been a long, long time since I had done anything simply for the pure joy of it. It had been a long, long time since I’d remembered to embrace silliness.

So, this past month, I have been busy “embracing the silly“. I bought an elephant teapot and a pair of mis-matched socks. I’ve been watching a lot of silly movies and TV shows on Netflix. I haven’t read a single “smart book”, but have devoured several novels. I let you, my readers, help me name my elephant tea pot. I dove into some fun craft projects, and I got a very fun and silly winter hat from a sister-in-law who wanted to help me in my quest for silly.

In 2011, I want the shift to be more permanent. I’m ready to move forward through the heaviness of transformation into the joy of new beginnings. I’m ready to dance in the sunlight, to laugh out loud, to wear my silly mis-matched socks, to watch more silly movies, to catch snowflakes on my tongue, to dive headlong into work that brings me joy, and to teach classes that make me giddy with the anticipation of offering joy to my students.

In 2011, I choose JOY!

The Journey to the place I am now

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t like making promises to myself that I’m sure to break.

For the last two years, however, I have been choosing a word for the year – something that sets my intention for a direction I want to head. Two years ago, I chose “fearless”, because I was in a place where I knew that I was letting fear hold too much power in my life. Sure enough, when you set an intention like that, the challenges show up to test your resolve. I was brought face to face with a lot of fears, some of which I met with the necessary courage, but some of which got the better of me.

Last year, because “fearless” had brought up a few too many big issues, I thought I’d be more gentle with myself, and simply accept what was meant to come. I chose “journey” as my word for 2010.

Little did I know just how far the journey would take me.

First there was the journey to a new way of being in my body. After years of contemplating it, I finally went for breast reduction surgery. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about deliberately changing my body in such a dramatic (and really rather violent) way, but in the end it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I have been granted a new freedom, with less of a burden on my shoulders, more opportunity to wear the kinds of clothes I wanted to wear, and improved posture that made me feel better about the way I carried myself in the world.

The most beautiful outcome of my surgery has been that I have discovered a joy in running. I run at least 3 times a week, and it has become about so much more than simply seeking a more healthy body. When I run, I meditate, pray, and open space for my mind to explore beautiful possibilities. A lot of wonderful ideas come to me when I run.

A few months after my surgery, the journey took me (and my family) down an extremely rocky road. While I was in Chicago at a conference, my dear husband had a serious breakdown. I came home, hoping it would turn around, but it didn’t. His mind went to that ugly place that mental illness takes you, and when he couldn’t find peace, he attempted suicide.

Fortunately, the suicide attempt was unsuccessful, but we still had a rocky road to navigate on the way back to health. Trying to balance the needs of three daughters with the needs of a husband in the psychiatric ward is one of the heaviest burdens I have ever been called on to bear.

We all survived, however, and Marcel was soon on his way back to stability and health. Our daughters, too, showed strength and resilience, and before long, we felt like we had finally reached a smooth place on the road.

In June, I spent a life-changing week at ALIA (Authentic Leadership in Action) in Halifax. It was there that the seeds of Sophia Leadership began to sprout.

Summer was a good time for us. We camped, we went on road trips to soccer tournaments, and we spent a delightful, relaxed week at a borrowed cabin by the lake.

In the summer, I did what I’d been longing to do for about a year and a half, and that’s when the journey became really interesting. I handed in my notice at work. It was one of the scariest things to do, knowing we didn’t really have the financial security we needed to raise a family, but somehow it just felt right.

In one of those delightful moments of serendipity, within minutes of coming to the conclusion (together with Marcel) that it was time to give my notice, I got an email from the university inviting me to teach three courses in the coming year. It was just the sign I needed to convince me that I would be able to thrive in self-employment.

In October, I left my job and started a brand new journey into self-employment. The month of October was my transition/sabbatical month, and so I spent my time relaxing, reading, and meditating. Possibly my favourite moment of the year was when I traveled to Ontario to attend a circle/story workshop with one of my heroes, Christina Baldwin.

Since then, I have finished teaching my first course, and discovered that I LOVE to teach. I’ve also done some freelance writing, started this new blog, created my business website, joined the board of UNPAC, met with a lot of people, and explored a lot of possibilities.

This new self-employment journey is so many things rolled into one – it is exciting, challenging, fun, nerve-wracking, discouraging, frustrating, delightful, confusing, overwhelming, and freeing.

I wish I could say that now, three months after I left my job, I have it all figured out. But that would be a bald-faced lie. There is so much of this that still feels so frustratingly ambiguous and sometimes I beat myself up for not having more focused. At the same time, though, there are so many beautiful possibilities opening up that I know that it’s better not to trap myself into a narrow framework that will end up leaving me feel trapped.

One thing is for sure – given the way the last two years have gone, I am being very careful what word I choose for 2011! More on that later.

Tips for creativity – plus a tour of my studio

I’ve been having lots of fun making some very cool Christmas gifts in my little studio, plus I’m working on launching a creativity workshop in the new year, and so my thoughts have been on creativity. In that spirit, I made this little video to share some of my fun tips for being more creative.

PLUS if you watch the video, you’ll find how who won the “name my elephant teapot” contest.

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