5 Books I’ve Resolved to Read in 2012

 

I’m not big on making New Year’s resolutions, per se. However, I love the whole out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new attitude. Of course there is the requisite dieting, but only because I don’t fit into a single pair of jeans. Instead of boring you with my oatmeal and egg white regimen, I thought I’d channel my self-improvement enthusiasm into a reading list.

Here are five books I’ll read in 2012:

40 Days to Personal Revolution by Baron Baptiste 

I read this one last January and tried to follow the 40-day “transformation” program that included daily yoga and meditation. Daily – that was the kicker.

Read the rest of this post on Modern Mom.

 

Random Bubbly:

• Parenting Trends, and My Too-Tight Sweater
• Girls Trip New York City Style
• Reflections of 2011, aka Holy Crap, I Did All That?

 

Image: macinate, Flickr

 

 

 

2009: The Year of the Vision

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t really, but the start of a new year is a very good time to work on new habits. I participated in a workshop yesterday where we talked a lot about planning – long range planning. A lot of us realized that we haven’t taken the time to dream up a ten or twenty year plan. We haven’t thought much about our livelong goals.

Do You Have a Vision For Your Life?

Think about how fast ten years goes by. And it goes by whether you’re doing what you want or just plodding along. So that’s my big New Year’s habit – to spend more time creating and reviewing long term goals and dreams.

In another part of the workshop we identified some of our strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths is organization and planning. I’m SO good at setting goals, making lists, and getting things done. Speaking of GTD, part of an good organization philosophy is to make sure you’re getting the right things done. That is, working toward the big goals you’ve actually chosen for your life. We also talked a lot about organizational values yesterday and the need to clearly articulate what they mean to you.

What Do You Really Value?

For example, you may value say you value honesty, but how does that play out in your life? You may also value relationships. Sometimes those two values are going to collide. As when a friend does something you don’t necessarily agree with, but is nevertheless not really any of your business. Are you honest about it? Depends. Turns out you need to rank your values for just such occasions. If you rank honest above relationships, you bust out with the raw truth. However, if you rank relationships over honesty you keep your mouth shut.

The focus of the day was on professional situations, but the workshop facilitators encouraged us all to think about our overall personal values too. I kept looking at the wall where the center we were in had their mission and vision statements, right there next to their list of values.

So as part of my New Year’s habit to take more time for BIG planning, I’ve decided to create a personal mission and vision statement, and get to work on those values too.

Tools You Can Use

• David Allen’s brilliant book, Getting Things Done
• My new fave, Zen Habits
• I use gtdagenda.com to manage my tasks and as I work on the bigger picture components using that system I’ll report my results back to you. I use the premium version of this site, but there’s a free version that is essentially the same. You just can’t track as many goals and projects.
• Check out Parent Bloggers this weekend. Together with the Big Tent group organization site, they want to know how you’ll get your act together in 2009.
• PBN and Big Tent have teamed with and Compass Life and Business Designs to offer group leaders who start a group on or move to BigTent by December 31 a free one month membership ($19 value) to Compass Coaching Network. Plus group leaders will be entered in a grand prize drawing for a “Life Makeover” private coaching series ($1500 value). Groups must be of at least ten members.

Go, dream, get organized!