Planning for the New Year

I’ll admit, I’m a planner. My family would laugh at this understatement since I tend to overplan when it comes to most everything. I was the kid who packed her bags a month before camp, just to see if everything would fit. I also like lists and have been known to make a checklist of things I already finished just to have the satisfaction of checking it all off.

So when it comes to a New Year, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I have plans, oh do I have plans! But instead of the typical, Type A, O.C.D. list with sub points and bullets and footnotes to denote exactly what I’m doing every month, every week of the year, I’ve taken a different approach.

While I do have goals for the months ahead, my priority in the past few days has been finishing my first Mind Movie. If you’re not familiar with the process keep reading, it may be something you want to do in 2012.

The process started a few years back when I was asked to write out, in detail, my perfect day. That appealed to me, it was like a list and covered many aspects of my day on a “perfect” typical day. Even completing the assignment was helpful and eye opening when I honed in on what made me tick and actually made a new friend with a similar perfect day.

Recently I reopened that doc and tweaked a few things before incorporating it into my Mind Movie. Since I have very little patience for video software I used Powerpoint to create my movie. It’s about 4 minutes long and consists of a series of pages with words and pictures that represent the life I want. It’s not incredibly detailed but enough.

In the slides about travel, for example, I used a Polaroid frame for images of the cities and monuments I want to visit in the next few years.

Instead of looking at a list, now I daily watch this short movie about my life. It’s a little like a future looking autobiography. And the images evoke a much stronger connection than simple words.

So if you struggle with coming up with a 2012 business ‘plan’ or you’d just like to do something a tad more creative to represent the life you have on December 31, 2012 then try a Mind Movie. Begin each day watching your movie and then get to work making those images reality.