Dare to dream and consciously curate your life

Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one, wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, poet

If the last two/three years has taught us anything, it is that life is too short to be spending it living in a way that is not meaningful for us. Mary Oliver is right. We have ONE wild and precious life.  Although we cannot control all of it, we can try and avoid getting stuck, avoid regrets, create a life that fits with our values and walk right into opportunity where we can.

It’s so easy in this frantic world to continue rushing from one day or task to the next without taking time to think about what is meaningful for as human beings (as opposed to human doings).  Before we know it, another day, week, month or year has gone by and we have given no further thought to our dreams, whether they be big or small changes we hope to make.

At the beginning of the pandemic I found by chance an online webinar led by Tracy Forsyth, a well respected coach, which amongst other things focused on creating a vision that encompassed all aspects of our lives for the next five years. She took us through an exercise that turned out to be the starting point for me taking control and responsibility for what I really wanted to do instead of treading water, feeling a bit stuck and letting life happen to me.

Of course, having competed this, I immediately forgot about it and put it in a drawer – we were in the middle of a pandemic after all! But it had started me thinking and without even consciously realising it, I started to take some steps to achieve my vision. A year later, I found the document again and was pretty astonished to see how many small but frequent changes I had made that was bringing me one step closer to where I wanted to be.

For example, I had visualised myself having completed a coaching qualification course within 5 years and was working flexibly. At the time I visualised this I was working full time as Head of Department and had not even started to look for coaching courses. I just knew it was something I wanted to do...some day, maybe in retirement. However, now that I had articulated that it was important to me,  I started to notice adverts for coaching courses appearing everywhere I looked.  From neuroscience I know now my brain had acknowledged this was important to me and was filtering information. Within six months, I had enrolled on the course that was to bring me to where I am now. It did get postponed due to the pandemic but I was on my pathway!

It's not just about work though. The exercise encouraged us to think five years ahead, visualise and articulate how we wanted to be living as if we were there right now. To take the shackles off and dream!  This included thinking about:

·      Home environment: where are we living, the feelings we are experiencing when we come home and who was with us

·      Work: what is working life looking like? Hours? Venue? Colleagues? Flexibility? How does it make you feel to be at work?

·      Social connection: what does your social life look like? What balance do you have between spending time with those important to you and having time to replenish?

·      Finances: how are you managing your finances? If you find yourself focusing on an amount you are earning, consider how does this make you feel and what does this allow you to do?

·      Personal development: what interests are you following? Any courses you are taking to move yourself further to your goals? New skills you are learning? How does that make you feel?

·      Wellbeing (physical and psychological) -  how are we treating our body and our mind, keeping ourselves well and how different do we feel?

·      Family relationships: how connected do you feel in your family relationships? How do you interact with each other and how often do you spend time together?

·      What else?

You might be a visual person and prefer to draw or to create a digital vision board. You can do this too! However, I would encourage you to start with the written word as the act of writing in pen or pencil has been shown to slow our thoughts down, allowing for valuable thinking time to develop awareness. You can always translate this into pictures if you wish.

Focus on what is important and meaningful for you and write this down – not what you think you should perhaps write. Take the shackles off and dare to dream

Now what do you notice? How big is the gap between where you are now and where you would like to be? In some areas, there may be very little gap and in others there may be a gaping chasm! How does that make you feel? What steps could you take to close the gap?

This is something quite powerful (and fun) to do by yourself somewhere peaceful with a cuppa. However it is even more powerful if you do it with someone else, particularly to work through what you notice and what you can do about changing things.

I am now living the way I want to live, making conscious choices that work for me and my family and that fits with my values. I have step by step curated a life that is working for me so am a fully paid up advocate of this approach!

If this sounds like something you want to try then contact me on flamingoplm2022@gmail.com