It’s been a long, long time…hasn’t it?*

*huge props to anyone who can identify the lyrical reference–leave a comment below if you can and you’ll be enthusiastically celebrated.

I haven’t posted in quite a while, because I’ve been thinking Deep Thoughts about where I want this blog to go. You should be seeing me post with some regularity again.

In the meantime, I’ve started off the new year differently than I have in the past, thanks to Cairene MacDonald, who recently hosted a teleclass with her own coach Laura Burkey on choosing a theme for the year, rather than goals or resolutions. Because you know how the latter usually works—you set yourself up for failure, with the best of intentions. If you’re lucky, maybe you even last a whole month. (Me? Not even that long.) Then you spend the rest of the year berating yourself for not keeping your resolutions or not working more diligently toward your goals, slipping further and further into resignation and self-criticism.

Fun fact! I just went to my favorite online anagram creator (be warned—it’s highly addictive), plugged in the word “resolutions,” and one of the anagrams it came up with was “onerous list.” How fitting is that?

I’m tired of that whole resolve-and-fail pattern…but I have some definite directions I want to take this year. So a theme seems like a great idea. According to Laura, a theme gives you a point of focus, but it doesn’t have any specific “action steps,” and you cannot ever be failing at your theme. To a recovering perfectionist like me, that’s important.

Here are the four main concepts to consider when creating your theme for the year. I feel okay sharing this with you because Laura offered them to us for free on the call. I’ve also rephrased some of them a bit, so it’s a mix of her words and mine.

• Your theme should reflect the emergence of your true self. It’s not about changing yourself—it’s about adding to or improving on who you already are and always have been. Some aids to thinking about this are phrases like “What I have always…” and “As a kid, I always…”.
• Your theme must be timely and relevant to you right now. Whatever words you use to express it will speak volumes to you, and resonate with your heart, mind, and even your physical body.
• Your theme should require a daily, healthy stretch. Not to stress you out, but more as a call to yourself from yourself to extend yourself in new ways that you want. Not because of internalized “shoulds,” but because you have chosen this direction for yourself.
• Your theme must “stick.” Its words should really pack a punch and be catchy and memorable to you. Personal.

I’ve chosen a theme for the year. Wanna hear it?

::whistles::

Oh, you do? Okay, then.

My personal theme for 2010 is “Nourish my life, claim my power.”

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Nourishing my life is partly about physical nourishment. Because I have some serious and deep-seated issues with food. I don’t eat well, I never really learned how to cook or enjoy healthy food, and I’m starting to suffer from this. The irony is that I’m probably severely malnourished at the same time that I’m significantly overweight.

This year I want to focus on nourishing myself with food and movement, rather than restricting myself to foods that I don’t enjoy and forcing myself to exercise. I’m not going to say “I can’t have that” or “I must do this.” Instead, I’m going to experiment with “What do I want that would nourish me?” and “What ways of moving would give my body pleasure?” So nothing is out, but I’m looking for more of what I want in.

But the concept of nourishment goes deeper than that. I’ve spent my entire life being a people-pleaser, and now that I’ve decided I want to live life on my own terms at last, I’m having trouble figuring out what those terms are. It seems that somewhere along the way, I forgot how to have fun in ways that don’t require winning the lottery to finance. When someone recently asked me the question “What would you do if you had today entirely at your disposal?” I had to honestly answer, “I don’t know.” That’s heartbreaking and more than a little frightening.

So as a first step, I’ve created a list entitled “Ways to Nourish Myself” and stuck it in my planner so I always have it at hand. It has some incredibly simple things on it like “breathe deeply” and “stretch,” which I can do anywhere, plus things that are more location-based (“cuddle with my cats”) and some that are mini-projects (“try a new recipe”) or longer-term ones (“grow plants”). I’ll add to it as I think of more things, but already this list gives me something to turn to if I’m at a loose end and want to do something to steady myself and experience some pleasure.

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Claiming my power is about stepping into a place of more confidence. For instance, I want to launch a business this year. (Stay tuned!) For the past year or so, I’ve been in learning mode, taking in books and recordings and advice from others so that now I can picture myself as a “solopreneur.” (Which just means being in business for myself, without having employees. Gotta love clever terminology.) But when I look back on last year, I realize I took on the role of the apprentice in my own mind.

I’ll never stop learning, growing, and asking for help and advice, but I need to stop seeing myself as an apprentice now. I need to trust that I have legitimate skills and wisdom to offer, and move out of information-gathering mode into implementation mode. Every entrepreneur I know says they didn’t know what they were doing when they launched their businesses—they just jumped in, started doing things, and noticed what worked and what didn’t. It’s time for me to stop reading about how to swim and dive in already, trusting that I’ll figure it out as I go along and that I have people on my team who will support me in all kinds of ways.

I also want to claim my power in the realm of personal relationships. I’ve gotten much better at stating my wants and needs clearly, and understanding that they’re as valid as anyone else’s—but I’d like to develop that even further. I want to be able to communicate openly and directly, but without anger or violence, in a way that affirms what I want but also seeks to understand what the other person (or people) want. I want to get better at finding win-win situations, and at making conscious choices to walk away from situations that become too toxic for me.

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So…it should be a very interesting year for me. I’ll keep you posted on my progress from time to time.

What about you? Have you made any promises to yourself this year, and if so, how are you doing so far? (And how are you doing it? If you’ve found a way to keep your resolutions, inquiring minds want to know!)

How does the idea of an annual theme sound to you? If you’re exploring it and want to comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Again, happy 2010! I hope it’s a great one for all of us.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about next year. I’ve had a year of making great progress “in the soft,” as Havi Brooks would say (that’s the inner emotional and thought-process kind of self-work), and in 2010 I want to continue with that. However, I also have some definite goals “in the hard” (all that outer, tangible and sometimes trackable stuff) that I’d really like to achieve. Have I learned enough in the past few years to be able to have “hard” goals again without beating myself up over them? And will they block my “softer” goals, or can I find a balance between the two?

Luckily for me, Pace and Kyeli Smith, whom I’ve written about before, are launching their newest program today. It’s called ”52 Weeks to Awesome, and it involves a conveniently year-long process of completely pressure-free and non-guiltified remarkamobilization. (That’s mobilizing yourself to become even more remarkable than you already are. Of course it’s a word. Humph.)

I could talk about it, but why not let Kyeli and Pace do it themselves? I was lucky enough to catch them before they head off to Ireland very soon on their honeymoon, and they were kind enough to let me interview them.

You’re offering a year-long e-course entitled 52 Weeks to Awesome. “Awesome” is a pretty vague term—what exactly do you mean by it?

Our definition of awesome is pretty simple and twofold: a) Knowing what you want and how to get it, and b) knowing what you don’t want and how to avoid it. This knowledge coupled with this behavior makes for a pretty awesome life.

I’ve seen your list of weekly topics for 52 Weeks to Awesome, and it’s quite aweso…erm, impressive! What were your criteria for choosing which topics made the list?

Well, with 52 missions, we had lots of space for as much awesome as we could come up with. Almost. I mean, we did wind up with 5 bonus missions, because we kept coming up with stuff. But anyway. Every mission had to be simple, concrete, uncomplicated, useful – and fun. We want every week to be something that’s straightforward and simple to implement because that keeps it do-able, and if they’re fun, too, that’ll keep you opening those emails.  (:

I’ve lost count of all the programs I’ve started with enormous enthusiasm, only to berate myself when I inevitably fall off the wagon. How can people like me get around this tendency?

Yeah! We planned for that! The first week’s mission is about figuring out how to avoid exactly that. It’s called “Helping you complete the next 51 missions (and anything else you commit to).” We realize that the course won’t do anyone any good if it’s sitting at the bottom of your trash folder, so our first priority is to help you get what you need out of it.

I also tend to get very rigid in the way I define success—where maybe I’m not really doing all that badly, but my thinking becomes very black-and-white. For instance, I might start an exercise program where I decide I have to or should work out four days a week, but I only manage to do it two or three times. So in my mind, I’ve failed, my self-esteem takes a blow, and I stop working out entirely. I recognize the folly of this way of thinking, but it’s so hard to break free. Any suggestions?

*nods* That’s exactly why we made the missions optional. You’ll get out of it what you put into it, but we won’t judge you based on how many missions you complete, or how well you complete them. This is exactly why we put “Self-acceptance essentials,” “Self-esteem essentials,” and “Self-love essentials” at the very beginning of the course — weeks 2, 3, and 4. Hopefully that will be quick enough to beat the “have to”s and “should”s to the punch. (:  Last but not least, anyone who enrolls in 52 Weeks to Awesome gets a lifetime membership — you can repeat the course as often as you’d like, and you don’t even have to wait until next year. So imagine your life explodes in January, and you get behind on the course. In April, you finally have time to devote to the e-course again, but now you feel behind, like you have a mountain of backlog. Just start over. Just start over from the beginning, and we’ll re-enroll you so you start receiving Week 1 again. You can do this as many times as you like, with no worries or judgment.

What can we say to ourselves, or do, to help ourselves feel that little steps really do make a difference?

It’s like moving. When you get ready to move, you (or at least, we) look around the house and feel overwhelmed. So much stuff! So many things to do! But if you grab a box and start packing, before long you’ve got an empty house and bunches of full boxes. You can’t possibly fill 10 boxes at once — you have to take it one box at a time till you’re done. The same thing applies here: one step at a time. You can’t burst into awesome and totally change your entire life overnight (well, actually, you can, but it’s really crazy and we don’t recommend it). Reminding yourself that the really good, permanent, sticky changes take time — and that every step you take is good, no matter what — will really help put it in perspective.

What are each of your personal favorite topics in 52 Weeks to Awesome?

(Pace says) I can’t pick a favorite based on usefulness, because all 52 are useful. So I’ll pick based on which is my favorite to talk about: Week 52: Manifestation essentials. That’s when I get to go off about my personal philosophy of the nature of reality. The stuff we teach that week works regardless of your metaphysical beliefs, but it’s fun to think about and talk about anyway. (:

(Kyeli says) For me, it’s a tie between Week 10: Stopping the Downward Spiral and Week 15: What is Fear, Anyway? These have been two of the most powerful steps I’ve taken in my own personal journey towards awesome, and the two I’m most excited about sharing!

What have you each learned in creating the program?

(Pace says) Amusingly, I’ve learned a lot about the usual error. Some of the missions I thought would be easy turned out to be unexpectedly challenging for others, because those missions rely on things I’ve already internalized — but we haven’t taught yet. We wound up doing a lot of re-ordering to be sure we covered the basics before moving into the stuff that wound up being more complex. The other thing I’ve learned is… I guess I’d call it a Grand Unified Theory of Awesome. Putting all the pieces together in a way that makes sense to teach them has helped me understand how they’re all related, and the underlying principles behind it all.

(Kyeli says) Brevity with impact. I’m a rambler, and keeping the emails in “bite-sized tidbits” has been challenging and fun.

What does the program cost, and where can people sign up?

We want this to be affordable for everyone, because being more awesome is a solid foundation for world-wide change. The 52-week course, plus 5 bonus weeks, is $52 — and, from Monday the 14th (that’s today!) through Thursday the 17th, it’s on sale for $39; $39 amounts to three full months free! We even have a few apprenticeships, where you get monthly coaching and extra email support for the entire length of the course.  There are only six of those spots, and each one is $390; Registration is on our site, here.

If people want to know what other awesomeness you two ladies are up to, how can they stay connected with you?

We’re both on Twitter – @Kyeli and @PaceSmith.  Kyeli is prolific, goofy, and talks to her uterus — so you’re forewarned. We’re on Facebook as Kyeli and as Pace. And, of course, there’s our blog where we talk about being awesome, the Connection Paradigm, personal growth, and all kinds of interesting stuff!

Click here or on the graphic above to view more details

Thanks very much for your time, Pace and Kyeli! Happy packing, and have a wonderful trip to the Emerald Isle!

In the meantime, I’ll be looking over my “52 Weeks” goodies and thinking awesome thoughts about 2010.