Thursday, March 27, 2014

Revisiting 2014 Resolutions for Spring

The start of Spring is as good as any time to pull out and dust off the goals or resolutions set when 2014 dawned brightly. For me, 2014 is the year I WILL. And to achieve my goals, I need ...
 

Welcome Spring with Fresh Tulips

My Goals for 2014

For 2014, I set three goals. Sure, in 2013, I declared my goals here publicly. But my goals for 2014 are different.
 

My goals for 2014 differed from those I set in 2013, in that there's one big goal and two that actually support that goal. Besides sharing my 2014 goals here, I also put them to paper, something I didn't do with my 2013 goals. And, I went further. I spoke them out loud and recorded them with the intention of sharing them.
 

I was going to share the video of my goals (watch now on YouTube) when I talked about joining the Bold, Brilliant, Beautiful project. But, I chickened out. I shared just a snippet of my goals, the portion where I say I AM ENOUGH. I AM BOLD, BEAUTIFUL, BRILLIANT. (I mixed up the order. In my snippet, I'd even accidentally mirrored the words I was holding up for the world to see.) The snippet was me chickening out.
 

My first goal is a reminder that I chickened out on starting my business in January 2014 after I jumped. Listing it as a goal again feels like a defeat.
 

In my Bold, Brilliant, Beautiful post, I was writing "2014 is the year I take more risks. 2014 is the year I execute on ideas that I've dreamed about doing one day or even half-started but never really committed to." But, privately I was doubting whether I could actually do what I wrote. What I said. I was being a hypocrite. I was talking a good game. Heck, I didn't even follow through the first time I set this goal, what makes me think I can do it this time?
 

Progress to Date

So how am I doing on my 2014 goals? I haven't made as much progress on them as I'd like. But, I have made progress. I've started the port of this blog to Squarespace. I set up a newsletter (currently just a weekly digest that gets delivered to inboxes every Saturday morning at 4:00AM Pacific). I soft launched The Road to The Good Life Cooking Club, rolling out a 1.0 version of my online Thai cooking class. I began storyboarding and videotaping my cooking lessons. Slowly but surely I'm making progress.
 

What I Need

March's prompt for the Bold, Brilliant, and Beautiful project is "I need ... ." And, I've struggled with it. I talk about authenticity. About openness. But when it comes down to it, the implied vulnerability that's inherent in authenticity, in being open, terrifies me and has me kicking and screaming against my enlightened self that's dragging me forward.
 

I need:

  • to stop chickening out.
  • to get emotionally attached to my big goals.
  • to follow through on my goals.
  • to ask others to compromise.
  • to get mad.
I call chickening out and not getting attached other things. On the surface, you'd probably think I was fearlessly ploughing ahead. Have you ever heard me utter, "it is what it is"? That's me letting situations dictate where I put my efforts and avoiding getting attached to my goals. Being ok that I'm compromising on my future goals because they're not set externally, and they can be shifted. There aren't any other people I need to coordinate with. The only person I'm disappointing or letting down is myself. And I need to stop insulating myself so much that I don't care and am willing to postpone my dreams.
 

How are you doing with your New Year's resolutions?
What do you need to make them happen?
 
genuinely eden

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Credits: All layouts designed by and images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for The Road to the Good Life.