January 1, 2016 marks my five year anniversary of quitting my last job to live my dreams full time.

Five years!

This year I’ve been having a really hard time sitting down to write this “goodbye 2015 hello 2016” post – because I am just feeling so much about this.

Five years!

I’ve built this dream into a stable and steady business that supports me in living how I want to live – in every sense of that. I mean having a meaningful and fulfilling and creative and expansive and deeply connected to myself with all the play and self-care I need kind of life. And also of course making enough money to make that happen.

(I do want to share more – a lot more – about this and I want to help you to create the same thing for yourself, so I will be doing a series of group coaching calls for coaches/artists/healers/teachers in February – this will be free for all Creative Dream Circle members?and only available?for Circle members.? More details?to come this month)

I feel proud and humbled and happy and grateful and when I think about where I am now my heart starts to sparkle. It’s almost too much, which is why I’ve been having a hard time sitting down and doing this.

But here I am.

It’s January 1, I’m sitting on my yellow sofa in the dream loft drinking an eggnog latte. It’s crazy sunny. I was up way too late playing with my friends and family and in a few hours I’m heading out of town with them to go play some more.

For these few hours when I’m alone I want to look back and look forward and savour it all.

I’m going to use my Creative Journal Prompts for the New Year?to lead?me though this.

Goodbye 2015. Looking back:

What was amazing in 2015?

Oh my gosh!

Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance – my year-long advanced practice class on journaling. Because I was doing this class as my way of leading it I feel like all the other amazing things that happened spring from this work of digging in deeper and shining out brighter.?(This program is still available in the?Creative Dream Circle)

I released my first deck of Journaling Cards.

I stopped taking new coaching clients. ?I’ve always felt this tug between loving that kind of in-depth work and loving having a schedule that is not all “booked up”. ?I have enough regular clients now that it feels like I’ve struck the perfect balance. ?It feels really good to know what a “full” coaching practice means to me, and to have it.

I grew the Creative Dream Circle to the point where it feels stable. ?People come and go but?the overall number of members rises steadily. ?In the past there were more peaks and valleys as getting to stability does take time/work?(some of you may remember that I have been working at this for a few years – looking back from “being here” I can see that the slow grow is really a much better way both for me and the Circle. ?I still don’t want a huge influx all at once).

After being really happily single for a long time, I fell in love and began the process of building a relationship that is more nurturing, supportive and expansive than I knew was possible.

We’re having lots of amazing adventures together including a canoe trip where we got to sleep under the dancing Northern Lights.

2015 was my first year being opening “out” as a grey haired lady. ?I did start growing out my roots in 2014 and then right at the end of 2014 I got a crazy-short haircut to get rid of all dyed hair so I started 2015 with my natural color. ?I am so disappointed in the messages society gives women about aging and?in how many women buy into those ridiculous stories?about there being something wrong with your body looking exactly the way it looks. ?I get A LOT of comments on my hair, all the time – even strangers tell me I should dye it – which just shows how important it is to have women out there with their natural hair, not giving a shit and also not being willing to marinate my precious head in chemicals every 6 weeks.

My mandalas were published in a coloring book!

I started skating after a 20+ year hiatus which completely transformed my experience of winter as I developed?a new habit – sunset skating on the river.

What did you do in 2015 that you?re proud of?

Well that repeats from a lot of the above – I’m proud of the life I’ve built for myself. ?But more importantly I’m proud of who I have grown into.

What did you learn/discover that you want to bring into 2016?

The real and tangible magic of holding the intention to deepen my practice and how that changes things without working with specific?intentions for what I want… letting that come from a wiser part of me.

What do you want to leave behind in 2015?

This thing I just noticed about myself where I tend to contract when I am afraid. I’d like to expand in the face of fear. My intuition says that this would be safer. It feels scary but I want to try.

What are you most grateful for about 2015?

The way it all came together. I worked hard to grow into the person I wanted to be and this year felt like less work and more enjoying already being there.

How did your dreams grow in 2015?

Magnificently. There are more creative projects I wanted to take on than I did, but that’s just normal for a creative mind – there is always more to be inspired about!

What did you do to help your dreams grow in 2015? What worked? What didn?t work?

That deep and solid container of daily practice. Meeting my feelings, doing energy work and journaling with my creativity and intuition. This always works.

This year I didn’t do the stuff that doesn’t work, I feel like I weeded that out really well in 2014 plus with Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance lighting my path I stayed focused in the right direction.

How did YOU grow in 2015? What gifts and strengths do you have now that you didn?t have in 2013?

I feel like I grew beautifully. I’ve been growing creatively and spiritually for many many years, what was new this year was growing in partnership. I grew my capacity for vulnerability and deep emotional honesty and feeling really truly loved.

Is there anything you need to do to complete your year? Any unfinished business that you?d like to finish, and leave behind as you move into 2016?

I just got a bill for property taxes for the last 2 years on the dream loft. Since the loft is a new building it took the city some time to set up each loft as a new property. I knew this was coming and had put money aside for it so it didn’t feel like a big deal.

But as I sat with this question I saw how paying the bill, symbolically does show a movement forward. Being settled here in my new life and everything that buying the dream loft represented for me: freedom and being true to myself as a creative person and living life on my terms and not settling.

So, yeah I will think of that when I pay this bill this week and savour the beauty of being settled in my new life.

Hello 2016! Looking forward:

List 5-10 things you?d like to have happen in 2015, in each of these different parts of your life:

health

to keep enjoying: biking, long walks, skating, to keep getting better at cooking healthy foods and having them ready in advance, to discover more breakfast options, more yin yoga

relationships

explore the magics of intimacy and vulnerability, keep working with this book, more snuggling, practice being more open hearted with everyone, make more effort to get together with people,

creativity

daily drawing practice, to make lists of things I want to draw and work through them, sew some great fall and spring coats, sew a beautiful kimono, find more?creative projects I can do with my sweetie’s kids

purpose/career

keeping finding new ways to love what I do, practice aligning deeper with purpose and letting inspiration come from there, trusting other people to help support my growing business, creating another deck of cards, creating that other idea that I’m not ready to share, and that other other idea

money

I am so proud of how much money I saved in 2015 I don’t know how to expand on that, I do want to grow my income by 20% in preparation for some life changes in the next few years

self-love/self-care

fill two of these, breathe deeper more often (think of ways to create reminders to do this), drink more water (boring but this is what’s coming to me), keep exploring how boundaries are working in my life and where I may want them to change,?replace Netflix with?more nurturing forms of downtime, make more of my own personal care?stuff (like body lotions, hair stuff, deodorant, bubble bath) with my favourite essential oils

spirituality

daily meditation while experimenting with ways of tracking daily meditation in my journal, daily energy clearing and alchemy practices, ask for help more often, when I don’t feel that inner alignment – STOP (no matter what I’m doing) – and get back into alignment before going on with my day, be more consistent in my yoga practice

happiness

well when I am doing all of these things I am happy! It doesn’t feel like more is needed here so I’ll share a photo of a groundhog eating my cupcake from a picnic last summer.

adventure/play

more beach days this summer (have already planned this with my sweetie), trip to Mexico, more picnics though it will be hard because I had a lot of picnics in 2015 but I want more still, drive out to the country to watch shooting starts/northern lights when they’re happening, be open to finding new ways to play that I like

 

(I’m going to skip some of the prompts about my dream because this is stuff I’m already writing about every week in the Sharing Circles in the Creative Dream Circle and holy moly this is long already.)

 

What?s your plan for giving your dreams what they needs to thrive in 2016? Brainstorm 10 things you can try.

• deep alignment and letting all action come from that
• walk my talk and share my story as I do (which is the only form of “marketing” I want to do for my work in 2016)
• stay committed to daily practice
• listen to my intuition and and act on it
• remember that every obstacle is a gift
• be more proactive about looking for miracles
• diligent planning and making space for all the things I want to create
• oh actually make more space for planning like every Monday morning ALL morning (not planning and to-doing but being in deep internal connection to the essence of my dream so plans come from that connection)

 

What do you want to STOP doing in 2016? And what are some things you can you do to make that as easy as possible?

Over the course of 2014 I stopped doing the things I didn’t want to be doing in my business. At this point I feel pretty grounded in not doing those things anymore.

I’d like to stop hesitating to tell the truth about how I feel, I’d like to stop interacting with anyone who makes me feel like I need to prove myself. Daily practice supports me in doing these things – it makes self-betrayal sting a little more.

 

Then imagine yourself at the end of 2016 (You might want to draw/collage/doodle an image of you from one year from now). How are you different? How did you grow? What new strengths and skills do you have? Does you-from-one-year-from-today have any messages or advice for you?

Me from one year from now is more grounded in her self. More confident, in a quieter way. Her clothes are nicer – all silky and gorgeous.

She says: radiate stillness.

I get it. That is the perfect guiding light for 2016. ?Which is funny because I didn’t set out to find a guiding light for 2016 but here it is.

Radiate Stillness.

PS: The YEAR OF DREAMS Epic Playbook: Guided Journal + Coloring Book for Healing, Magic + Dreams Come True starts Monday! OMG! Click here to read more about it and join the adventure.