Once again, I’m offering my RESET workshop so we can kick of the new year right. This workshop has proven to be so much fun, and so effective for figuring out what we really want, and how to move towards making that happen.
We take journaling and planning seriously in this course. Taking pen to paper is a powerful way to figure things out. Like a math problem that gets too complex to figure in your head, our lives are complex, and taking the problem to paper can make it easier to see solutions.
Writing it down also helps us track changes and measure progress. If you really want to change something in your life, write it down. If you know something in your life needs to change, but you don’t know what, or how, write that down, too. And then keep writing.
This class is paced out over four days, and the space between classes is intentional. This allows you the time to process each lesson before we take what we learned and apply it to the next lesson. Thoughts will bubble up as you’re washing the dishes or playing Minecraft or otherwise making your way through the day.
Each day we will start with an 11 am PST Facebook Live in our Facebook group (be sure to join our Facebook group). The live lessons will be around 20 minutes (hopefully, I’m trying to keep them short) and will go over the day’s workbook which you can download from the day’s lesson here in our Courageous Courses school.
Course outline:
Wednesday, December 28, 2021
2021 in review through all areas of our lives
What’s your ideal day?
Thursday, December 29, 2021
What do you really want?
What changes do you want to make in your life?
Friday, December 30, 2021
What words are you choosing to set your intention for the year?
Saturday, December 31, 2021
Putting it all together
From plans to actions
I will keep this course open for new students and available throughout the year until December 1, 2022. You can come back and rewatch the lessons or review the workooks at any time. RESETs don’t have to be confined to the New Year.
I’ll see you Tuesday morning. I can’t wait to get started!!!
I love watching kids create. They naturally come up with these little tricks to supercharge creativity, and they don’t even know they’re doing it.
We just returned from a Washington Coast getaway with family, and as usual, the kids taught me a thing or two about creativity. Really, I think we can learn a lot about creativity from kids.
I get creatively challenged all the time. You know how it goes…
You’re sitting there staring at a blank piece of paper or computer screen, and your mind goes blank. nothing. zip. How on earth are you supposed to be creative when your head is empty?
It sucks. I’ve been there. I still find myself in that place all the time.
But, maybe that’s not really the problem. Is your mind really blank? Or is it so full of so much everything that your brain throws up a blank, white wall in a self-protective measure?
When you sit down to create, and you’re faced with a blank screen or paper, the possibilities are infinite, and that’s hard to process.
The way to deal with too-much-everything is to narrow things down. Add some limits and boundaries and see what happens. Narrow the focus.
What happens in your brain when you go from “I’m going to write a blog post,” to “I’m going to write a blog post about apples”? I don’t think I’ve ever written a post about apples, but I’ve got to say, I felt a shift when the focus narrowed from the infinite to specifically apples when thinking about this example.
The boundaries help.
The specificity helps.
Now narrow it down some more. Keep narrowing and getting more specific until you have something you can work with.
The 3-Marker Challenge
On a recent vacation, my daughter and my niece spent hours with their noses in their sketchbooks playing what they call, “the 3-marker challenge.”
They pick a subject (cat, dog, dragon, whatever they think up) and then they each grab 3 markers with their eyes closed. Then they set a timer.
The challenge is to create the coolest looking image of the selected subject, in the specified amount of time, using only the 3 colors they grabbed from the bucket. They draw, compare notes, compliment each other, encourage each other, and then pick another subject and trio of markers to do it again.
They spend hours playing this game, and I’ve got to say it’s the most ridiculously wholesome way I can imagine a couple of 12-year-olds would think of to spend their time.
It inspired me, too.
The real trick of this challenge is in limiting the colors. Just three markers in random colors. That can really limit your options, and it’s precisely those limits that get your brain spinning in different ways. Limitations require you to think differently to get around them, and thinking differently is where your creativity starts to kick in.
This little game works as a warm-up before diving into your creative project, even if you can’t draw and your project has nothing to do with art. It’s about getting your brain to think differently.
If you’re hitting a wall, creatively, maybe your options are too wide open. Try adding some limits. Maybe the scope of your essay is too wide. Maybe you need to narrow your intended audience. Maybe you need to dial in on the focal point of your painting; you can’t focus on everything.
Friends are the family we choose. Just like our families, their influence on our lives, and how we perceive and interact with the world is vast. It could even be argued that because we choose each other, who we befriend may influence us and say something about us even more than our families.
I really believe you are the company you keep and you have to surround yourself with people who lift you up because the world knocks you down.
– Maria Shriver
I always learn so much about myself when I write about my friends. What traits do all my friends have in common? Why do I (subconsciously) seek out those traits in my friendships? There is so much self-knowledge to mine in considering friendships. What kind of friend am I?
Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them and it will change your life.
– Amy Poehler
Writing helps us understand concepts and even our own motivations on a deeper level. Prompts help us focus the writing. These journaling and writing prompts about friendship will help you delve deeper into the nature of your friendships, and why those relationships, and those people, are so important to you.
A friend is someone who give you total freedom to be yourself.
– Jim Morrison
15 Journaling / Writing Prompts about Friendship
1. Write about a group of people that leave you feeling happy and at ease after you’ve spend time with them.
2. If you were having a rotten day, who is the first person you would want to talk to? And why?
3. Describe some traditions you’ve had with your friends.
4. Are you comfortable asking your friends for help when you need it? Would they ask you for help?
5. Do you have a friend you haven’t seen in years, but you’re sure if you saw them, you’d pick right up where you left off?
6. What is something nice a friend said to you that meant the world to you?
7. Is there someone you’ve been missing, but you haven’t reached out to contact them? What keeps you from reaching out?
8. How would you like to be described to others by your friends?
9. Have you ever lost a friend? Been unfriended? What happened?
10. Who has always been there for you, no matter what, through thick and thin?
11. Describe in detail someone who means the world to you. Include appearance, mannerisms, personality, quirks… everything that makes them who they are.
12. What do you believe are the most important qualities in a friend?
13. Have you made any new friends in recent years? How does the process of making friends feel different from when you were younger?
14. who are the people in my life with whom I feel the most like myself?
15. Make a list of all the people who have helped you in your life. Keep adding to this list as you think of more.
What other prompts or questions would you add to this list? I’d love to hear your suggestions, and I’m always trying to improve on my lists of prompts.
If you enjoyed this list of journaling / writing prompts, check out my Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds for daily prompts and other inspiration.
Enjoying living while much of our lives are on hold
This has been a waiting season for all of us. The pandemic has sidelined our dreams and so much of our daily lives. Even spending time with friends and family is so fraught with consequence and concern. Without even a countdown timer to know when all this will end, we wait in a morass of question marks.
We’ve been through waiting periods before. Every woman who has given birth understand that feeling of waiting: the weighted burden of restricted activities to be followed by new life. There is hope in the waiting; it’s what we cling to. There is also an end in sight, and an end in sight means you can make plans.
It’s hard to make plans right now
It’s hard to make plans when you have no idea what to expect, or when to expect it – and when interacting with others can have such deadly consequences. Making plans means taking control, and that’s hard to do when everything feels so out of control. But that is exactly why we need to make plans right now.
Make plans anyway
Having a goal and working towards it is one of the most powerful things we can do to help lift ourselves out of the grey. Maybe you can’t throw yourself a massive 50th birthday party and invite 200 of your closest friends, but what can you do? What is something you can plan and work towards? What can you invest your time and energy into that will give you a sense of purpose and forward movement?
Staring out the window, waiting for the pandemic to end is a very slow and lonely way to pass the time. Yes, there are so many things we can’t do right now. But that mindset is the equivalent of staring out the window, waiting. It wont fix anything.
You need a sense of purpose
If you have an idea of the things you want to do post-pandemic, what can you do now to put yourself in the best position to take action when the time is right? If you want to go scuba diving off the coast of Mallorca – what can you do now to get ready?
Plan out the rest of the sites around Spain you’d like to visit.
Start a savings account specifically for this trip.
Start a file on your scuba adventure and add to it regularly.
Make the planning process fun too.
If it takes you 3 years to get there, and the room rates have all changed by then, so what? You already have a head start and a good understanding of what to expect, and changing a few details is no big deal.
Start working on another project
That’s right. This pandemic isn’t going to disappear tomorrow. Find something else to do. Take online classes. Pick up a new hobby. Explore your neighborhood and community on foot. Decorate your house for Mardi Gras. Find something that gives you a sense of moving forward, and even accomplishment. Time will move more quickly, and your emotional wellbeing will improve as well.
Help someone else
As difficult as this is, there’s a good chance that someone around us is having an even more difficult time. Even with distancing practices in place, we can still organize a meal train for the family of someone who is ill. Organize a neighborhood cleanup to pick up litter. Write a letter or schedule a zoom call with someone who is lonely. Helping others is a wonderful way to make yourself feel better, too.
This wont last forever. Something else will take it’s place, and we’ll learn to adapt and make the best of that situation, too.
CoffeeJitters is an affiliate to a number of sites and services. I do not endorse products I don't love. I may receive compensation if you purchase items from links on this website.
