Completing this year: three steps that will help you create the next year

Some people think that “to complete” means to finish or to succeed.  Yet “to complete” is better defined as “to make something whole” — which, in turn, means letting things be as they are or as they are not.  Accepting things as they are (or accepting them as they are not) allows you to clean up the space that until now has been taken up by that thing you’ve thought of as incomplete/unaccomplished.  Accepting things as they are (or are not) allows you to claim back the energy that’s been drained by the incomplete hanging around like ghosts.  You accept a “loss”, you celebrate a “win”, and you simply decide to complete the incomplete.  A system and a ritual may help so here is one you can use alone or with a friend.

Step 1: Complete the old

(a) Looking at all the areas of your life reflect on 2009: list all of your Wins, Gains, and Breakthroughs. Mark each one as either Complete or Incomplete.

• Celebrate the items that receive a Complete and acknowledge yourself for them.

• Next, find a date by which you want to complete an incomplete item. For example, you finished a novel, but you haven’t completed the looking-for-an-agent process.  When would you do that?

(b) Again for 2009 list all of your Losses, Disappointments, and Breakdowns.

• Mark each one to see if you are complete or incomplete in accepting them, and set a date to complete them. (You might not know HOW to complete, but never mind that — just set a date.)

• Look at 3-5 lessons you have learned this past year that you want to carry into 2010. When thinking of what to include, remember that you want to consciously use these lessons in the coming year.

(Here are some examples: I learned —

• to let go of circumstances I cannot control
• to listen to my heart
• to ask for help and support
• to salsa dance and etc etc etc)

Step 2: Create the new

(a) Imagine ahead to December 2011

• Write a list of your Wins, Gains, and Breakthroughs for 2010.  Be specific and write them as though they have already happened.  (For example, “I have a lucrative and satisfying career.”) Look at each area of your life and make the list as long as you like.)

(b) Give the year to come a Name. If next year was a movie, what would its title be? (For instance: Year of “Life is Delicious!” or Year of “No Kidding”)

Step 3: Anchor the creation.

Take the list you wrote in Step 2, take the name you thought of, and put them where you can always see them.  And then drink a glass of champagne.  Or eat a piece of cake.  Or do whatever seems celebratory.

Happy New Year!

Copyright © 2009 by Global Coach Center.
If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us!

New Year’s Resolutions? Wishes? What is it where you are?

On my other website — a Russian-language site that’s dedicated to healthy and sustainable lifestyles — we have a poll.  The question we ask is “What’s most important to you in the New Year holiday?”  And we have five multiple choice answers, one of which is “Expectation of something new and better in the New Year”.  Not surprisingly the majority of people mark that as their answer.

Indeed for many of us the New Year signifies new beginnings, new chances, new hopes that whatever we dream about will come true.  And we go about “requesting” these new things in different ways.  Some of us think of what our wishes are for the New Year, others create resolution lists, and yet others don’t do anything but have hope.

My childhood was spent thinking of wishes because I grew up in a country where that was the tradition.  To this day I continue to “wish” although I now live in a country where creating New Year’s resolutions is the traditional thing to do.  What about you?  What’s important for you in the arrival of the New Year and how do you “request” it?

And if you live abroad, what New Year traditions have you observed there and how does it affect your own way of thinking about the New Years?

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Copyright © 2009 by Global Coach Center.
If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us!

Success: what does culture have to do with it?

When I went to the Miami Bal Harbour Mall for a business lunch-meeting a week ago, I knew I entered another world.  And not because of the high couture brands that I saw there — but because of the amount of “plastic” that surrounded me.  Not “plastic” as in credit cards, but “plastic” as in “plastic” people, both women and men.

Those of us without any plastic surgery were in minority in that restaurant.  And since I’ve just recently moved to Miami from Russia — another place on the planet where having plastic surgery often means “you’ve made it” — it got me thinking.  What defines our understanding of success?  What part of our definition of it comes from us as individuals and what part comes from the culture that surrounds us?

When I coach my clients we always look at the set of values that each client holds dear to him/her.  And success as a value comes strongly in almost all of them.  Yet the definitions of it vary widely from client to client.  For some success might be a few billions in the bank, for others — a happy family, for yet others — fame, for … we can go on and on.

So what determines our definitions of success?

I think it’s a combination — a combination that came about as a result of blending our family culture, the culture of the place where we grew up, the culture of the place where we live, the culture of the place where we work, and the culture of people who surround us.  As we go through our lives, some of these influences change, some go away, and others come in.  And our definition of success changes with them.

What do you think?

People who enjoyed this post also read:

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Three reasons to become an expatriate

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Copyright © 2009 by Global Coach Center.
If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us!