The Planned Creative

she designed a life she loved Here you are - all full of spit and vinegar with you lofty goals and what you want to get done in the next year or so... What do we all do next? Well leap in and do ALL THE THINGS because we're super excited to get rolling of course! What happens next?  A bit of time goes by, we get tired. Life starts rearing its ugly head. Busy season at work comes, kids activities get rolling, holidays happen, family comes to visit, skip a couple days here and there... wait has it been two months since I looked at that already? Cue self-flagellation spiral, a couple more false starts and crap. Now there's only three months left to do a year of work, and it's chock full of other commitments already! What if I told you that one little step, maybe a couple hours of your time, before you go running off gung-ho could make the difference between insanity and success? Get your hands on a year calendar like any of these here . Grab some different coloure...

Inspired Inspiration... It's all around us. If only we take a moment to really see. It's what can keep us going, keep us looking forward and striving for our goals. It's also what can help us fully appreciate everything we've done and have at this moment.  We get bogged down in the day-to-day hustle, forget the point, forget what we want, forget what matters to us. It's sneaky and relentless.... and our greatest enemy. In my mind I picture it like a creeping shadow stealing in over the world around you slowly sucking the colour and light into a drab grey scale landscape. Ew. Ever see The Never Ending Story? Yah, like that. The good news is it doesn't actually take much at all to keep the Nothing at bay. One teeny daily practice, and I promise you won't even look that weird.  Step one: Set a daily reminder alarm on your phone, for a time you typically are not in meetings or driving or some other normal scheduled time you shouldn't be distracte...

Don't Forget to be Awesome Ah, fall. Let the mayhem begin! Kids are back to school and the extra-curricular activities are back in full swing, work is wrapping up third quarter and everyone is just realizing they haven't even finished second quarter goals and somehow the year got away from us and we need to pull a miracle out of our butts to accomplish everything in the last quarter, not to mention all the upcoming holidays we need to figure out Christmas gifts and Thanksgiving supper, and... and... and! Stop. Breathe. Reel it in. You've got this. Map it out on your calendar. Decide what you can ask someone else to help with. Ask them. Let go or schedule the rest. And remember this one thing...... Don't Forget to be Awesome!!!

Pocket Full of Sunshine With all the positive vibes hype that's been going on forever it's easy to get lost in the affirmations and law of attraction following.... You know, if we believe firmly enough everything will be awesome! (cue that LEGO movie song my spouse busts out randomly to annoy our daughter) 😁 For someone as deep-rooted pessimistic as myself I spent a long time completely dismissing the whole thing as delusional - and missed the whole point. My motto was always "Plan for the Worst". Over the past few years I've come to accept constant catastrophic is inherently unhealthy and promotes extreme dissatisfaction and unhappiness in your life.  Now, I'm not saying that just blindly believing everything will be great and nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you - that's the other end of the pendulum swing into delusional positive thinking. Bad things do happen to good people sometimes, and refusing to acknowledge or make contingency plans ...

strive for progress not perfection It's a sad truth... But it happens. As much as I love a good plan with timelines and milestones, one of the most difficult yet important skills to develop is the ability to adjust. We don't live in a vacuum and unfortunately the world often does not bend to our will nor is willing to acknowledge our set timelines and plans. Flexibility often does not come easily. With it comes so much fear - fear of not reaching your goal, fear of making mistakes and appearing foolish, fear of the unknown. So what to do with this? The best way I've found to think of it is to equate mental flexibility with physical flexibility. Training to do the splits does not mean just throw yourself down there - that's guaranteed to be super painful!! Plus you're probably never going to want to do THAT again 😱... Start with small actions . Store out of your favourite flavour of coffee creamer? Reframe your thoughts and try to view this as a chance...