Its hardly the time to start thinking about starting new goals and new ideas about what to do with yourself for next year. But it's not a bad time to start taking stock of where you are at with the whole work/life balance of this year and how you might want to change that in the future.
As we are so close to the season of indulgence, many of us start to fall off the bandwagon with motivation to exercise, eating correctly and maintaining dignity at social events whilst dressed inappropriately as a pirate!
But it may be a good time to just start to think about how you managed yourself this year and how you might like to do things differently in the dates to come. Most of us make it to Christmas with a frazzled look on our faces and a wide eyed expression of "are we there yet" fixed firmly on our faces. The week between Christmas and New Years is often when we start to madly spend time focussing on the dates to come. After the headiness of the days of eating and presents, all of a sudden we find ourselves faced with new years resolutions and pressure to come up with the 3 individual goals for the 7 sectors of our 'life wheel' in a mere 3 days. ARGGHHH!
So now is actually the perfect time to schedule in some time to sit, be, forget about deadlines and focus on what the goals for next year may be. What may you want to improve? What areas are the areas that you didn't spend time on enough this year? Did you get that holiday in? Did you maintain your fitness regime? Did you spend enough time with the kids this year? These are the questions to sit under a tree with and ponder and the time is NOW.
Scheduling in time to reflect is important. Putting it in the diary makes it a task. Which you want to do if you are serious about maintaining that balance between work/life/relationships etc. Brainstorming and ideas don't flow freely when we are frantic and stressed and trying to 'fit' something into the daily work planner. Like a garden, it needs time and space to grow.
So allot 30 min to 'plant some seeds' this week. You don't have to have the solutions til next year, but planting the ideas or even just identifying which areas need more attention may help to clarify that sector of life that you need to address for the future. Putting it in the subconscious means your brain may already start to be formulating solutions for you - so when you do come to sitting down in front of the blank piece of paper entitled 2015, you won't be stuck for ideas.
A little quote came to me this week which I rather like and think is kind of appropriate for keeping perspective for this time. I hope you enjoy it as it certainly resonated with me.
