This will be my last blog post of 2011. You may have noticed I’m a little bah humbug about the christmas holiday, unsurprisingly I am also not really one for celebrating new year’s eve. Crotchety old witch that I am, new year begins on 1st November for me. Plus, NYE is usually an over-priced night out with too many crowds for my liking and it’s never easy to get home. Mostly I give it a miss, unless someone’s hosting a relaxed gathering at home that takes my fancy.

What I do like, though, is noticing a change in number. Different numbers have a different energy too them and I do like to observe how that vibration feels. 2010 and 2011 were illuminating, boundary moving, imagination stretching and transformative, and packed a heavy, crunchy, uncomfortable, ‘strip everything away until you think you’ve lost everything’ kinda vibe. I am the most grateful for them of any years, although it must be confessed they weren’t the most enjoyable years ever seen. (Regular blog readers may recall I glanced at these years in the summer when I turned 32, so I won’t repeat myself.)

The most amazing things 2011 gave me

• clarity on my soul purpose
• understanding the true source of my power
• greater commitment to shamanism as my path
• connecting and reconnecting with many lovely souls
• the fluffy bear-cat Patch coming to live with me
• the birth of The Shamanic Voice
• learning that I am not invincible and cannot do everything all by myself
• a beautiful holiday in Spain
• having my heart broken & opened; experiencing through that a deep understanding of love & letting go
• being receptive to the true energy of the StarFire Alchemy courses, creating the full & joyous programme with Magin Rose
• meeting my niece (daughter of my best friend & therefore family) who is now 6 months old & truly amazing
• learning what I want to focus my work on for 2012
• finally taking the plunge & going vegan
• connecting with Sandra Ingerman, a great inspiration to me
• rekindling my true creativity through The Artist’s Way
• leaving university to pursue my love of learning in a way that actually reflects who I am
• manifesting my dream home in the country, leaving London behind to come to this beautiful spot in the Surrey countryside.

I could go on, I’m sure. It was a year of many, many gifts. What were the greatest things that happened to you this year?

Formulate your goals for 2012

I think it’s good for us to take stock of what we achieved in 2011. What ruled, what sucked, and what we learned. One of the people I discovered this year is Chris Guillebeau who wrote an amazing book that changed the way I look at things, and he is going through interesting ‘annual review’ process. If you are lacking perspective on where you’ve been and where you’re going, this could be useful little tool. However we choose to do it, moving into 2012 is a great time to set goals for ourselves for the coming year. It is, after all, a new number, with a new energy. What will it mean for you?

I’m working on a list of things I want for 2012. I’m still refining it, but at the moment it looks like this:

• Focus my work on helping people restore personal power through shamanism
• Continue to build on my own restoration of power & understanding of my true self
• Stick with my new & improved daily personal practice (that’s every day)
• Write my book
• Enjoy my relationship, my cats, my home, my beautiful countryside surroundings
• Improve my nutrition and physical strength
• Live in an easy, comfortable flow of wealth without compromising the work I love
• Allow my business to evolve into the success I want it to be; includes changing to more distance & digital work
• Write, record, perform…allow the creative side of my work to flow more
• Create an amazing drumming event in the summer (watch this space)
• Travel to places I have never been before, and have adventures
• Enjoy my connections with friends
• Get a new car
• Learn to swim (I can swim a little bit, but not properly, which is a shame because I like kayaking & sail boats)
• Do more yoga
• Organise my paperwork, workload & home so that unfinished tasks stop sapping energy
• Take greater time to honour the wheel of the year & other natural cycles
• Allow more time for play

And probably other things besides. Some are mundane, some spiritual or wider reaching…I think it has the balance I am looking for. More important that what’s on the list though, is how I am planning on going about it.

Don’t go it alone

My old tendency would be to take the above list of aspirations and turn it into a list of chores. These chores could, of course, only be undertaken by me, alone, as a control freak and martyr to my own causes. This year, I am calling in reinforcements, because I have finally learnt that we weave a better tapestry with more threads. So, my boyfriend (let’s call him a slightly obsessive neat freak who likes everything in its place) is helping with the paperwork and general organisation of stuff. A group of chums on a similar path are coming spending the first full moon of 2012 with me to offer support to each other as we dream 2012. I am working with a nutritionist to help improve my diet. And – so excited about this one! – I begin Corrina Gordon-Barnes’ group mentoring programme in just over a week, meaning I will be working with a group of 12 self employed, open minded women who are all supporting each other in our unique work.

Surrounding yourself with people, investing in training and asking for support are essential if you want to build anything sustainable and worth having. So when you are planning your 2012, remember to ensure you have that support. Who will you be calling on?

Never underestimate the power of positive dreaming

I put pictures of country houses on my vision board and two weeks later I was applying (successfully, as it turned out) to live in a beautiful house in the country. The Law of Attraction works if we make a commitment to it. A new number calls for a new vision board, which I will be starting this week in my kitchen. It’s my favourite room in the house and, because I work at the kitchen table, I spend the most time in here. It will have key words for my goals, good reminders of where I am going and pictures of things like the new car I plan of having pretty damn shortly.

Other things I’ll be working with include gratitude, positive visualisation first thing in the morning, positive affirmations and my old favourite ‘dreaming the world into being’ (look how much my life has changed since I started that in May!).

Make time & space

Nothing you plan to achieve this year will get done if you don’t create enough space for it to take root in your life. We’ve got to make it easy for ourselves, and allow the time for it to become part of our lifestyle and even be fun. Let’s take a simple example of my own:  improving my nutrition and physical strength. It’s not just a matter of saying ‘I will eat better and work out’. That doesn’t mean anything because it doesn’t do anything to create the fertile ground needed for those habits to thrive in.

It’s about ensuring the space is there in your routine to support that whole process, and make it less of a chore. For example, I have a nutritionist to help me, so I can learn more about what is best for my body and combine that with what I have already learned about eating to an ayurvedic body type. So I’m making sure I have the resources I need. I have found the best place to get my fresh produce (the village market on Thursdays), so my Thursday mornings are always for cycling into the village to collect those – bonus points for the cycling also ticking a physical strength box. Buying fresh produce weekly and maintaining my commitment to trying at least one new recipe every week means that I need to allot time in my week to food planning and scouring vegan recipe books and sites for inspiration – I am actually enjoying this, and I will continue to allow myself the time to do it. It feels like a luxury, whereas I used to buy what I was used to and for convenience.

As for working out, cycling to Thursday morning markets alone won’t cut it. But sometimes cycling can be part of my playtime, exploring new places. Sometimes I can go for a long walk in the woods instead. Boring work outs don’t stick for me – going to the gym is not an option, I detest those stinky places. Doing my favourite work out videos (yogalates and Davina) work for me, but my boyfriend works from home so I need to negotiate time where I am alone and have the space to do that each week. I also know I need external motivation, so I’ll be hunting down a good class to go to or maybe a work out buddy.

Creating a framework in your life that will support what you are trying to do is important for everything on your list. Thursday morning market run can become a part of your routine if you write it in. Morning meditation becoming non-negotiable will make you get up earlier and have more energy to do everything. If you have a goal to produce a certain body of work, create reasonable deadline dates for yourself and a schedule of work that makes it achievable. Most importantly: when you do this, be realistic and be kind.

Commitment

This is the big one. Make a commitment to yourself in some way that you have a reminder of what you are doing and why. Tell a friend or a supportive group – get witnesses. (Oops, writing a massive blog post means you have witnesses too – bugger.) Write it down, keep a journal, write yourself a contract, vow it to a deity and best of all, make a note of why you are doing this. Unless you have a big enough why, you won’t do it. Again, here are my examples:

‘Why do I have to cycle to the market to get my veg? It’s cold and I’m busy.’ Because you promised yourself great food as a way to nourish yourself and feel strong, plus you will feel crap later when you don’t have enough healthy fresh food to eat and have to go to the little village super market and make do with what they have, which is no good when you are the only vegan in the village. Now get on your bike, missy.

‘Why do I have to do my accounts? I *hate* it!’ Because you have your own business. You have worked for other people before, and you know how that feels. Now you work for yourself, and you know how that feels. Want to go back to a desk job, giving up your freedom just so you don’t have to do accounts? Didn’t think so.

And so on

You need to make space, stay positive, call on all the support you need and stay committed by reminding yourself why you signed up to those lofty 2012 goals in the first place. You can do it. So can I. Hurrah for the energy of this great new number, 2012!

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