Welcome back to Day Two of PowerSheets Prep Week! Day one was a lot of fun! We are having so much fun sharing our PowerSheets Prep Work with each of you! Are you following us on Instagram stories? It’s been fun to share what we uncovered in the first few pages of our Prep Work with you yesterday!
In the same way the seasons cycle through year after year, we often find ourselves in need of the same fresh starts, too. Perhaps you’re feeling inadequate, overwhelmed, lost or unsure of your path right now. Maybe you’re worried starting fresh is going to change you. So you hesitate.
Others wander aimlessly, not setting goals at all, but that’s not what happens around here. We set out on a fresh, purposeful path by uncovering cultivated goals. And then we do something about them (but that comes later this week )
So how does one start fresh? We have five tips to help you start fresh today:
Evaluate where you are. This is always the tricky one, isn’t it? Don’t we often just want to look ahead and say, “That’s where I want to be! That’s my goal!” But there’s a reason we have 33 pages of PowerSheets Prep Work before we do that! It may be hard and scary, but honestly evaluate each area of your life. You can give it a number or letter rating (we do numbers in our Cultivated Life Evaluation), and then sit with that. Don’t reach for your phone or a TV show or a book. Reflect on those feelings without trying to change them or push them away. Don’t get stuck in the negative soil! You can write out areas of progress even in the midst of the areas that need to be cultivated. Each area you evaluate is a potential area of your life that could be made completely new.
Learn from your past, and let it go. I won’t make a Frozen reference here (though feel free to listen to Elsa’s anthem for inspiration), but I will tell you that moving forward requires letting go of something first. It means accepting and believing that you have control over your emotions. It can be tempting to fast-forward over this, but sit with it as long as you need. Good things grow through the dirt.
Face your fears. My senior year of college, I was rear-ended and my car was totaled. It was a pretty traumatic experience for my 21-year-old self, and my father came into town to help with the insurance claims, doctor visits, and rental car pick-up,. When it came time to hop in his car to start our errands, he handed me the car keys and said, “Jessie, if you don’t get behind the wheel right now, you’re going to be scared of driving for the rest of your life.” Needless to say, I was terrified, but he was right. Fear can hold you back from making what matters happen. Challenge yourself to write your honest feelings and fears, even the things that are scary that you don’t want to write. Why? Seeing your fears allows you to face them and then move forward.
Define what matters most to you. Good goals are about cultivating what you’ve been given well: your relationships, your money, your possessions, your work, your home, your health, and your time. A little intentional forethought goes a long way, so take some time to reflect, and ask yourself, “What matters most to me?”
Make a plan, and stick to it! We love the accountability that comes with writing down your goals in our 2018 PowerSheets One-Year Goal Planner. It’s 12 months of worksheets, prompts, and monthly Tending Pages to help keep you on track for making your goals happen (that’s less than $5 a month if you do the math!). Even if you aren’t a PowerSheets user, you can still write down your goals and put them in a prominent place. Keep them in front of you so you can constantly re-evaluate where you are and where you are headed.
We want to help you start fresh and kick the year off with a bang!
Join Lara this Thursday for How to Set up Your 2018 PowerSheets webinar. She’ll be walking through the PowerSheets Prep section of the 2018 PowerSheets and showing you how to get organized for the new year, make your goals happen, and live intentionally in the new year. We can’t wait to see you! if you can’t join live, a replay will be available for all those who sign up.
The Cultivate Team shares their personal PowerSheets Prep Work on Day Two!
Your turn! Leave a comment and share a time you’ve started fresh. We’ll come back tomorrow and choose one lucky winner to win a $25 Cultivate Shop gift card!
Don’t forget to share your PowerSheets Prep Work with us on Instagram! Remember, you must use the #PowerSheets hashtag and your profile must be public to be entered to win. One lucky winner will win a FREE 30-minute personal coaching call with Lara. Lara doesn’t offer individual coaching sessions (she hosts the MTH Conference every year instead), so this is an extra special giveaway. We’ll choose one winner on Monday, December 11th. There are no limits to number of entries, so share as often as you’d like!
This is His Year: our first-of-its-kind workbook to let your faith inform the goals you set for the New Year.
Set, plan, and track progress toward the goals that matter most, big or small, the things you’ve always wanted to do—with PowerSheets!