Goal Setting on a Snow Day
As we enter into this new year of 2024, so much is being said of goal setting and achievement orienting. What do you want to accomplish? Who do you want to become? What will you manifest? And I am a huge proponent of taking the time to reflect, set goals and point your arrows in the direction you want to go - I even just signed up for a free workshop on this very thing! And yet, as I gaze out my window upon the first winter snowfall, a layer of soft snow blanketing all our growth, I want to look at my goal setting from a wider lens. With manifestation and creation, we often think the work is simply about achieving the external thing - making the painting, winning the award, getting the job, doing the work. And while these things are certainly part of the creation process, so is the destruction. So is the cleaning out of closets to make space for new materials. So is the day spent entirely on the couch, just because you need to rest. So is every “rough draft” and “not my best.” These sidesteps, creative pauses or breaks - where we step away from our work towards a goal to tend to ourselves, clean house and reset our foundations - are actually not sidesteps at all, but vital parts of the creative cycle. Just look at nature. Look out the window where, covered in snow, everything is asked to slow, pause, reset. Do the laundry, cook the chili, shovel the sidewalk. Because if we did not, and if spring came too soon, our buds would prematurely bloom, without having taken the time to get all the nutrients needed to stay strong through the summer.
Part of thriving is pausing and playing. Part of getting shit done is doing nothing. And part of becoming the person you want to be is holding a thousand funerals for all the versions of yourself that you once were. And then donating her old clothes to Good Will.
I think of this all as I spend a lot of my free time not in churning out artwork or launching new products, but in reflecting on the next steps I want to take. In walking through the wintry woods with my dog, her playful hops through the snow reminding me we have nothing if not enjoyment. In reorienting my desk to better face the window looking out at the snow, creating more space in my creative landscape. I can’t wait to share what will grow from it.