Goal Setting For The New Year

For the past four years I have been doing an exercise in goal setting as the New Year approaches. It has informed what my year has looked like. It has shaped the flow of my work patterns and has ultimately led to some pretty magical things. The formula I use for goal setting is unique and feels different then setting resolutions. Resolutions are wonderful ways to get pumped about the New Year. What I notice though, is they fizzle out with time. It is hard to stick to a new year’s resolution in June. Goal setting however has a different flavor, the goals can consistently be reworked into whatever seasons you are in and are open to re-evaluation at any time.

Sounds good doesn’t it?

Since starting goal setting I moved, had another baby, and got my writing published in an online magazine. While doing back yard nature meditation, one of my goals, I gained perspective on what I truly wanted to do with my career. I left my job to start my own business. I have also prioritized my hobbies and things I want to do just for me, like writing and learning to knit.

Here are some steps to guide you through my ritual of goal setting.

Painting by Liga Lazdina

Find a Friend

The first place to start is by finding a friend. A friend is a way to keep you honest in your goal setting. A friend’s perspective helps you to set realistic goals for your life while also giving you the encouragement you need to pull off big things. Not all friends are great for this so choose wisely. Pick someone you trust that has good listening skills. This friend could be a long distance friend. You can set up online skype goal conversations.  Don’t be limited by requiring that the friend lives in your town or city.

Set a Date and Plan

After finding a buddy interested in doing this with you set aside at least three hours for a  “goal date” in the afternoon sometime after Christmas. If you don’t have three hours to spare in one day stretch the date out over a period of a week. Pick a time when you will not feel rushed.  Items to bring to your goal date include snacks, tea, notebooks, colored pencils or markers, old packing labels or paper to cut up and a hole punch and string. Consider this your big picture thinking time. Before this date I often like to have my initial brainstorm for my goals done. I do this while walking or cleaning. These are my two thinking times where big ideas come out. I often scribble them down in my notebook or put them in the notes in my phone.  When I come to the date I have an idea of what I want to do and it gets me ready for the big brainstorm.

Talk and Listen

At your goal date take turns listening to each other about the things you want to manifest this year. This looks like one person giving their full attention to the other person without interrupting them or offering advice. A timer on your phone should be set to help ensure that each person gets the same amount of time. I often set the timer for 20 minutes each. Decide who goes first and switch when the timer goes off. For the person talking, you can do this however works best for you. Some people like to work back wards and start by discussing where they want to end up by the end of the following year. Some like to use the attention to just brainstorm about the things they want to see in their life. Some like to share the history of the previous year to gain perspective on what they want for this new one. All are valid and most likely you will do a combination of all these things.

Painting by Nora MacPhail

Take a Break

After the first forty minutes take a snack break, bathroom, maybe even go for a short walk around the block if you are feeling extra luxurious around time. Don’t let the break go too long though; twenty minutes should be enough to clear your head.

Writing Brainstorm

The next step is a writing brainstorm. Both goal setters get out their notebooks and write for twenty minutes about the things they want to manifest over the next year. Take from your pre-meeting notes, your time talking to your goal partner and any new thoughts you had during the break. I find it’s best to let your self write it all out and not worry about whether or not its practical or not concise enough, editing comes later. This exercise is about getting the ideas on the page. This can be a magical step as you see your goals lay out before you, each one blossoming into a new perspective or project.

Compare Notes

After your writing brainstorm is complete you can now let the editor in, take ten more minutes by yourself and look over what you have written. Circle the parts that stand out the most, the ones that have the most charge behind them.  In your writing find a hand full of goals that seem doable this year that speak to what you want for your life and help deepen what you have already.

Compare Again

Do another twenty-minute share each. This time when you are listener you can also offer advice or perspective. If the talking person needs some guidance this is a good time to give some words of encouragement. Hopefully at this stage you will be able to easily see where you want to put your energy in the following year. You can write out the goals on a clean sheet of paper during your talking time to be able to easily see them.

Take a Short Break

Take a short break, ten minutes total, than come back together for making goal art. This is the fun part of goal setting and should not be overlooked in importance. Creating goal art gives you a little treat for all your hard work. It’s a reward and it creates something eye catching you want to look at through out your year.

Goal Art

Take twenty minutes and make your art together. The art I make involves taking old packing labels and creating a taggie. This looks like a little book that ties together with small pictures and words describing each goal for the year on each tag. I find keeping the wording simple is best. Choose an image that best describes the goal and gets you exhilarated about it. These taggies can be as simple or complicated as you like just as long as they are eye catching and make you feel excited about your goals. I return to my goal taggie throughout the year. I keep it by my desk as a reminder of all the things I want to do and all that I have already accomplished. The goal taggie keeps you honest and is also cute.  Share your goal taggies at the end of the time. You are now done with your date.

Follow Up

Follow up should happen with your goal buddy throughout the year. I recommend meeting every three months to check in with your goals. Figure out what is hard, what might need tweaking, offer advice to your fellow goal setter. When you get together make it fun, the whole point of goal setting is to feel empowered by life and help each other out. This is not to criticize or make you feel bad or that you don’t do enough. If the goals are not working figure out what could work. Meet at a café, bring your taggies and enjoy your self. You can use the model of taking turns giving each other attention, or be less structured during these meet ups. This is about sharing love, wisdom and perspective and manifesting the world you want to be in.

This year my focus is on living more seasonally so I broke my goal taggie into what I wanted to do in each season. I am also constantly experimenting with how to best focus my energy. Good luck with goal setting and let me know how it goes.

 

Cleaning Out Your Childhood

I just spent a week in my childhood home. It took me to my mid-30s to face the final flotsam and jetsam of my childhood waiting for me in the closet. It took this long partly because I did not want to reclaim my beloved toys without having a solid house to put them in. Now that we have settled for a bit and Sweetpea came of age to actually play with these toys, I saw that it was time. For my mother it had been time for a while. She had been asking me to come get my stuff for years. We headed cross-country this summer with enough space in our car’s trunk for a few of the most valued of my childhood possessions. 

The sorting and trashing of nostalgia is an art form. In the KonMari method of de-cluttering, nostalgia is the last priority one should tackle when getting rid of possessions. Old letters, photos, dear to me trinkets and keepsakes have always had a place in my heart. I was such a romantic/nostalgic kid I would not let anyone throw or give away anything. Luckily I did not have a lot of stuff, but it still could add up. I kept paper bags of chestnuts and crab apples in my room for food in the tiny village games I made up.  I saved locks of hair in envelopes and had a collection of tiny boxes filled with sentimental tiny objects that people had given me or reminded me of places and events in my life. 

As I grew older and became more of an artist the stuff continued to pile up. I kept every issue of Seventeen magazines for collage clippings and every colorful sheet of paper to paint on. As I collected art supplies I also had a large assortment of pen pals, from pre-email days. I loved to gab on the phone with friends but I also loved writing to them and I now have 2 full sized boxes of letters to prove it. Such a treasure trove! There is nothing like old letters to set my cancer heart aflutter. Seeing my friends through words, our experiences together, our hopes and dreams, there really is nothing like it.

I was trying to let go of stuff though, right? Enter the non-nostalgic take care of business parent. This is operation clean out closet, leave no shelf un-dusted. My mission is to leave this place with just 4 boxes of mementos and one dollhouse, go! Luckily, I started the process a few years back when I realized it was time to get my old clutter out of my mom’s house. On that trip I actually went through all the old letters, pouring over the words of dear friends and giggling at a brief affair with a French man who called me Titi. I brought those letters home that trip, now was the time to completely empty the space. Most things were in boxes already but they still needed sorting. With my head and not my heart I sifted through the things that I deemed worth saving and the things that got passed to Goodwill. I often found my self faced with something I had kept for a long time. When I looked at these objects, specifically old works of pottery I had done, I realized the memory of them is what held the meaning. Out of context, actually holding the physical object did not hold the same importance. Many things ended up in the giveaway or throwaway pile that I would have never dreamed of being there before. 

I found the best way to get rid of nostalgic objects is to blow them a kiss as I passed them on. The energy that surrounded them had faded with age, sitting in my old closet for many years. I had very few regrets in this process of purging. There were a couple of handmade stuffed toys that I let go of that I am still thinking about but other then that it was good! It felt right to give new life to an old space. I gave my mother room to move on with that room and do what she would like with it. I am a lucky person to have a family that stayed in the same house through my lifetime, a family that held onto my things till I was ready to purge them. I know a lot of people who did not get that luxury.
Of the things I did keep, I now get to see them be brought back to life, like a “Toys” movie. I get to see my beloved, very 80’s-90’s Barbie dolls being played with by Sweet Pea. I get to see my resurrected old dollhouse in use again, with all its many, miniature, parts.  I still have 2 boxes that are filled with pure nostalgia, one day I might even purge some of them. For now, it is good to hold onto the many layers of self found in old art projects, journals, letters, pictures from my grandmothers and a few of their little trinkets. As long as it is just a few boxes I am ok with keeping them.

I prepped for this trip by working on my daughter’s art projects. From babyhood onward we had amassed a huge amount of sentimental artwork done by her. It seems that every corner of our home was crammed full with boxes and bags of her art projects. I set myself to the task of sorting through and figuring out which pieces were worth keeping and documenting. I wanted to make her a photo book of her best artwork from this early part of her life. What a great way to memorialize the work and let it go, I thought. I had to be very secretive about this process. If Sweetpea even sensed a hint of me trying to recycle anything she made, she was mortally offended. I spent evenings, after bedtime, going thought the bags and hours when she was on play dates, sorting. The whole process for this nostalgic, keep everything parent took a good, solid month. It was hard to see all those bags of her work go into the recycling bin, but when I saw all this open space in the corners of our house, and watched as she busted out 5 new projects in one day alone, I figured we could handle saying goodbye to 3 bags full of 2-year-old scribble art work.

The next big project is going though my artwork, eek! My office closet is filled with old photographic supplies and prints from my early days of photography. I will keep you posted.

Adult Unschooling

Definition of Unschooling: An educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning.

By Diala Brisly

One cold, January morning earlier this year, I told my partner, “let’s take this year to get our finances in order, no big trips, just focus on work that will pay off our debt and get us in a better place to do more of the things we want.” It sounded good to both of us. I was a little sad to put off seeing family and friends we love far away, but felt I was making the proper kind of adult decision a family with small children should make. Then life happened. My job became something I didn't want to do anymore. I got so inspired by the book I was listening to, "Last Child in the Woods," that I decided I couldn't wait any longer to follow my life path of teaching the skills of sustainability and living in connection with the earth.

I struck out, I quit my job and went rogue. I started my own business: Under The Canopy.  I am in month four of being a small business owner and it is going well. Currently, Under The Canopy consists of two after school programs and a series of workshops. I hold all my classes outside teaching about nature and how to connect to a deeper sense of place. It is a lot of work, but my passions in the driver’s seat and my family is supporting me. 

I can see how a life of unschooling has led me to this point. As a teenager I dropped out of mainstream education. I was thirteen and my mom and I decided I could take a "break" for 8th grade. I was unhappy at school. I always struggled with the way school was taught and I also was having trouble with the social dynamics of the middle school we chose. I went from a sweet public elementary down the street from my house, to a stiff upper-lipped prep school in another town where I knew no one. In elementary I was co-editor of the school newspaper; I was known as the writer and had a close group of girlfriends. In middle school I was an outcast, from the tough streets of my hometown, a much more urban environment then those posh suburbs.  I started getting low grades even in English, my favorite subject. There was less and less creative writing and more essays focused on correct grammar rather than the flowery, poetic, language my romantic heart loved to use.

We viewed taking a break as a chance for me to homeschool for a year before I entered high school. After leaving the prep school I was down trodden and spent a lot of my time watching TV.  I wanted to check out from the world. As I started to shed the layers of self-consciousness and slowly rebuild my self-esteem I saw the whole beautiful world that lay before me for the taking. I met a bunch of "unschooled" teenagers, youth that had never gone to traditional school, forging their own paths, working in the world and following their interests not based off of what they should be learning. I found a community in these “unschoolers”.  I decided on a plan, and I was not going back to school.

Fast-forward many years later to my adulthood. I worked many jobs as a young adult, lots of nanny gigs and clerk jobs in small shops. I knew I could pull off the unschooling as a teen because I had my parents backing me. As a young adult I wondered how unschooling would look now that I was grown up. I got a sense of what adulthood would look like and figured out a myriad of ways to side step all the boring BS I saw other young adults going through. I got a high paying, low hours, very precarious, job as a nanny. Being a nanny you never knew when the family would change their mind and not need you anymore. I made good money but rarely had the job security other more regular jobs come with. I worked as a nanny till I had enough money to travel for a few months. I would go off on an adventure, come back and repeat the process. I became interested in going to art school in my early 20's and did what I had always done when I had a new goal. I broke down the steps it would take to get me there. I got my GED and applied to college. I got in to my first choice school that did not use traditional grades and had an interdisciplinary liberal arts focus. I was also eligible for in-state tuition and being twenty four, not reliant on anyone else’s income, I was eligible for more money to make it all do-able financially. 

While in school I met my life partner. We decided to be committed to each other and then we got the surprise of our lives, our first child. I was uncertain how to pull off this parenting/unschooling life. One obvious choice would be to leave the financial part of our lives to my partner and be a stay at home mom (SAHM). SAHM's got all the freedom to do what they pleased with kids, play while others worked and it seemed like a good package. I started off SAHMing but two big things hit me with a thud. First, SAHM only truly works if your partner makes enough money that you are not constantly worried about making ends meet. Second, being an unschooler for most of my life I had so much creative ambition, so much zest for life. I wanted to make a bigger dent in the world then just parenting my children. I wanted to carry them along with my vision and parent them while affecting change on a grander scale. I had also been a nanny for many years, caring for young people was grand but I wanted more, I also wanted to work with adults and not always be in the care giver role.

I started looking for work with strict criteria. Being a recent college grad, in Austin, a new city, with a young child, and without the exorbitant amounts of money it costs to put a child in day care, it was slim pickings. I was thinking,  “this job better be worth leaving my kid, it better make enough money to pay for her childcare, and it better be fun and engaging”. It took me two years to find a job of this nature. Still, precarity followed. I got a job working at an after school program teaching art and social justice. It was perfect for me creatively. I got paid enough, I got to make art, write fun curriculum, work with interesting artists and activists, and be a leader. It was all the things I could want in a job. It was also part time work that changed seasonally. I was moved to different schools and had long stretches during school breaks where I made no money at all. Finding childcare for just the afternoons to make it all financially do-able was super challenging. Still the pros out weighed the cons and I stuck with it, picking up holiday shop work when I was off for too long. I found a flexible in-home day care Sweetpea loved that would have her just in the afternoons. It felt like I sort of had it made. I had a really fun job and I got to be with my family a lot. The uncertainty was hard going though, never knowing when the next job would be and where. We also started desiring other things, like a home we could set roots in, a weekly connection with family. We were ready to settle and Austin didn't feel like the place to do it.

We moved to Tulsa two and a half years ago. Upon arriving I got a job doing visitor services and programming at a public garden. The garden was dreamy work, flexible with my child care schedule, not too many hours, and the biggest plus: stability. My hours were set. This was a great thing until it became not a great thing. After 2 ½ years of being locked into a low pay non-profit job I was feeling the urge to move on. I still felt like we were scraping by and the only ways to move up in my organization was doing more stuff I didn't want to do. It was time to follow my bigger vision for teaching sustainability. Under The Canopy was born.

So here I am, a full-fledged adult in my mid-30's with two kids, a life partner, a mortgage and a degree. I am also now officially an adult unschooler.  I am living authentically, financially soundly, presently for the important work of parenting my dear children and sharing my vision for a sustainable future through the work of nature awareness at Under The Canopy. The next step is helping daddy get a chance to be an adult unschooler.  Our vision is to form a beautiful life doing the things we love with our family at the heart of it. We might be in debt for a while, we might not be able to travel for a while, but you can be sure we are following our dreams. Wish us luck!