The Year of Enlightenment

I haven’t done resolutions in quite some time. My goal-setting especially went out the window when I became a mother because I was like, “Can I get a restful night’s sleep? For once? Please God!” But over the duration of my lifetime, when I have done resolutions, I always seem to accomplish them. It’s nostalgic to read the goals from my younger self and how I achieved more than I put to paper. So here’s to restarting that trend!

If I had to give 2017 a theme, I would call it the Year of Enlightenment. I really want to be less distracted and focus on what’s most important (like family, friends, faith, my health and emotional well-being).

Relationships

• Strengthen marriage – go on date nights
• Keep up book club
• Restart movie night
• Girlfriend trip
• One friend connection per week (List 52 friends I don’t see regularly and reconnect)

Personal Growth

• Read one book a month (List 12 books for the year)
• Get published
• Work with a life coach
• Blog refresh – update ‘About’ page

Faith

• Pray every day
• Go to church regularly
• Have an understanding of the Bible, Torah, Quran, and the teaching of Buddha
• Visit a church, mosque, synagogue and temple
• Find fun religious events/experiences for Franco

Health

• Get acupuncture/massage once a month
  Go on a retreat
• Breathe and be present

Financial

• Rent downstairs apartment
• Save enough to be able to purchase another property

 Career

• Find a new job
• Have more balance and flexibility

 Important actions and habits to reach above goals

• Create before consume (write before reading blogs)
• Radical exclusion – actively minimize or stop doing things that leave no legacy or important impact
• Tiny habits program: start small, make it automatic
• Remember that there is so much support in the world (both within myself and through others). Tap into it.
• LOVE

Would love to hear what yours are!

Here are some resources to help.

I have been reading The Art of Ass-Kicking for several years now. Jason Shen’s a graduate of Stanford, where he was on the gymnastics team, and also co-founded RideJoy, which was a Y Combinator startup. He’s successful, published, creative, introspective, driven and a decade younger than me, which makes me feel bad about myself, but also incents me to fucking achieve. We gotta show these millennials who’s boss! Jason had this great annual review post and also put together this tool that you can use to reflect on 2016 and what you hope for in 2017.

Here’s the Tiny Habits program I mentioned above. It’s a 5-day program where you inculcate 3 habits every day and they’re supposed to be very small habits (i.e., After I brush my teeth, I will floss one tooth.). I started on Monday and one of my habits is “After I first check my phone, I will pray.” So far so good. Check it out!

This morning on my commute, I looked up and saw a rainbow. Amazing.

Photo above was from Burning Man 2007. See the double-rainbow? Doubly amazing.