Life swallows us up and we often lose sight of what we REALLY want.

Has this happened to you recently?

I have found myself exploring where I want to live and it’s making me realise how much I follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing, as it’s easier.

If I stop and get very honest with myself, living where I live now isn’t what I truly want – But what do I want???

I have no idea. Lol.

This is why I love this time of year.  As a chapter comes to a close I begin to ask myself what I want to ‘shelve’ from 2022 and what I want to ‘delve’ into next year.

This helps me get clearer on what it is I truly want.

I am talking about this in today’s episode, watch listen or read here:

If you want to take part in our annual Best Year Yet workshops that start on 6th Jan, here is the link:

>> SIGN UP FOR THE BEST YEAR YET WORKSHOP <<

This event is free and I will send you prep work straight away so you can start the Delve and Shelve exercise with me.

 

WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT??

This is such a big question, isn’t it? 

If somebody asks you, you know, “how, what do you really want from life, from art, from yourself, from others”? 

How do you want to live?

 It’s such a massive question because the way we can live our lives is huge and there are so many factors that influence what we really want.

 

MY REFLECTION 

I did a lot this year and I feel like I did a lot.  

There’s something really empowering around the year ending, the feeling of a chapter closing.  I love closing parts of my life and moving into a new stage.

Because everything is so chaotic and busy at the moment, it’s really important to take time out. 

It’s impossible to have our foot to the floor constantly doing everything. The work, the Christmas stuff, the constant thinking, I don’t know about you, but constant thinking about “have I done this”? and “I’ve gotta do this” and  “I’ve gotta buy this” – ahhhh.

So, it’s very important to take time to slow down. I think there’s a higher energy at this time of year in people in general. Everyone’s feeling it in some way, whether it’s the anxiousness of being alone, the craziness of having children and everything that’s going on.  

There is something heavy in all our lives.

This time of year, amongst the craziness I start carving out time to reflect on what I want.  I like to stop, pause and think back and show gratitude for what happened in the year just gone.

Despite the challenges, despite all the things, because I always say, having your best year yet does not mean you come out of the year unscathed.  I had lots of down points this year, but I still had my best year yet because I handled everything the best way that I possibly could. 

I am a big believer in designing your own life, creating your own success, being intentional about where you focus your time and your energy so that you can get the best version of yourself and the best out of your life. 

BEST YEAR YET WORKSHOPS

I am excited to run our FREE annual Best Year Yet workshops from 5th – 19th JANUARY.

I run these every year and it’s so exciting because we have everybody tuning in from around the world, all working on designing their own lives, getting really clear on what it is that you really want.

  • What do you want from your art?
  • What money do you want to earn? 
  • What is it that you want to do to make a living? 
  • How do you want to feel? 

Those kinds of questions are what we start to ponder and gain clarity on.

We delve in from the 6th of January but I like to get the seeds planting planted well before then because I like to reflect and plant seeds of intention.

Sometimes these are big changes, maybe moving to a completely different country for example. Those kinds of changes usually don’t happen overnight. They happen because we plant the seed of curiosity in the very first place to question and prod and think maybe this isn’t the way I want to live.

You can sign up now even though they start on the 6th of January we’ll send you the prep work now. 

The prep work will help you take time to reflect on what you want to leave behind in 2022. 

What do you want to leave behind and what do you want to carry into 2023? 

When you start to really work on this, you realize that you are the captain of your own ship. That you have the power to design your own life. You can choose what you leave behind, you can choose what you bring forwards. 

Sometimes we lose sight of that. Sometimes we’ve got so stuck in everyday life into following what everybody else is doing. We’ve probably maybe got stuck into a rut where we’re doing something over and over again and we’ve not come up to the surface to really think and ask ourselves, why am I doing this? Or, maybe you do know and maybe you have been stuck for a while but you just don’t know how to get out of it. 

Maybe you don’t know how to navigate your way out of a situation and maybe you’ve been realizing it for years, but you’re still stuck in the same patterns. 

If you’re stuck in those same patterns, it’s something to do with you yourself. There’s something that is either a mindset block or something to do with knowing the next steps to take to get yourself out of that pattern.

You don’t have to go deep into all of this right now, but the prep worksheets that I’ll share with you help you start to reflect back and think about the year just gone and beyond as well as what you want bring forwards. 

You don’t have to have big massive dreams if you don’t want to,  it’s about you choosing your life the way you want to live it and how you would like to make money. 

TIME TO NOTICE HOW WE REACT AND FEEL

I’ve been noticing in myself recently how I’ve made it very clear to people that this year has been very turbulent for me. And there have been moments when I’ve really struggled with my emotions and my mental health.

I was given notice on the house we live in and we need to move out. As soon as I received the news, the only way I can describe it is it’s like being on a big slide and the news was given and I flew down this slide really fast…down, down, down, down, down and into a big massive box full of garbage boxes and rubbish.  I’m sinking and there are all these boxes around me and I’m so far in, I can’t even see the way out of this big massive garbage bin that I’m in. 

Have you ever felt this?

I’m in it and I’m miserable and everything in life is rubbish and I have developed a fixed mindset, and people annoy and I can’t get out of the negative pattern.  It’s not a nice place to be.

 

SEEING THE LIGHT 

What has got me through these moments is having an inner knowing that, this time will pass. I am not going to be like this forever. We’re not going to be in this garbage bin forever. I will find a way out and sometimes we just need to sit still and just feel that we’re in there and go right, okay let’s stop for a minute. 

Because when you’re frantically moving around in the garbage box you’re sinking even lower, it’s like being in quicksand, isn’t it? And if you’re moving in quicksand, you go even further in and it’s that thing… if you’re frantically asking questions and feeling everything getting on top of you, you’ve gotta stop. 

And so for me, just stopping has helped and I’mnow at a stage I’ve clawed my way up the top of the boxes and I’ve got my head peeping out and I’m hanging onto the side of the garbage bin and I can just breathe and I can see the sky again!!  

I’m like, “oh right, we found the light. Okay, How are we gonna get out of this now? How are we gonna get out of this garbage bin so that I don’t fall back in again?”

And that’s where I’m at at the moment, got my head peeping out.  I’m working a lot on self-care right now.

I’m visualizing and also really asking myself, what is it that you want? 

I’ve fallen into a negative pattern recently and when I’ve been thinking about what I want, I have been convincing myself that it’s unattainable. That it’s not realistic, that it’s just never going to happen. I’m having to make some tough decisions.

 

So, hanging onto the side of the garbage bin, I’m asking myself, “how do we get out of this and how do we stay out of this? 

I’ve been shifting towards is this way of thinking instead. And I wanted to share it with you in, in case it helps

 

GOOD BETTER BEST

 

Rather than disregarding ideas and dreams as not possible, I am planting seeds of crazy possibility and creating GOOD | BETTER | BEST goals.

Good is the minimum that I need to make happen.

Better is – if I could by some miracle push to this bigger house, that would be amazing and I have a rough idea of how I could make it happen – but it seems far-fetched.

Then, my best is the house that I have no idea how I’m ever gonna get but let’s not throw the idea away!!

Let’s not disregard things as unattainable, unreachable, unaffordable, or don’t have time to do it. Instead of doing that, what is the option? 

I have done this many times in my past where I’ve planted seeds of a vision that feels completely crazy and it brings up all these feelings of it being ridiculous. But, by putting the intention there, crazy things start to happen. And that’s why I say you don’t have to know the steps. If you put it on your radar your brain is conscious and finds a way.

You have the power to design your own life. You have the power to create success,

You have the power to choose. 

 

I now look back at my life seven years ago and it was a completely crazy dream to be running United ArtSpace the way it is now. And it took me years to get here, but worth every moment.

If you want to join us in the Best Year Yet workshops we release all the content on the 6th of January as we work through that together as a big group from around the world. 

https://uas.unitedartspace.org/byy

For now, you can download that prep going sit in a cafe, reflect,

Take some time and plant seeds and make sure that you are taking time out for self-care. 

Make sure you’re taking time to breathe, sit and listen to the sounds around you and watch the trees blowing. 

It’s really important to just sit and rest your mind.