2011 was my first year of trying to combine coaching and writing and living more fully in the present. So, I’ve set aside the month of December for reflection and planning.   “Ready Fire, Aim” was advice from a Tom Peters book that I read many years ago that urged managers not to delay action until their plan was perfect.  I’ve always felt that we gain confidence and learn an awful lot from taking action that can feedback into our plans. I’ve seen again and again how planning too long without acting can cause a kind of planning paralysis that can actually prevent us from living our dreams (isn’t there always more we should learn first?).

I did jump into both coaching and writing this year.  People I coached discovered new career paths, could articulate their transferable skills with new confidence and enthusiasm, got new jobs and found satisfying outlets for their creativity.  I wrote enough to feel like I have the base of a portfolio.  I completed a few short products, started a bunch of new formats like personal essays, entered contests and actually sent query letters to publications I’d like to have relationships with.   I’m no longer talking about writing–I’m doing the work a writer does!  Through jumping in, I’ve discovered some of the things I’ve learned about coaching will make my writing stronger and some of the creativity strategies I’ve learned through writing foster out-of-the-box thinking in coaching relationships.

If one of my goals for my change focus life is living fully in the present, I have a ways to go.  I can see that I need to shut down the “shoulds” more often, allowing myself to “be”.  (Who said we are “human beings” not “human doings”?)  Important to remind myself that I didn’t change focus in my own life just to be as harried as I was before.  This is surely my tendency–one I need to guard against.  But looking at the year as a whole, I’ve made progress.   We did make 4 trips to see the grandchildren and had 2 weeks of vacation, one week with the family and one on our own.  We made time for lunches with friends and planning the re-landscaping of the yard.  All of those have been joyous opportunities to seize “right here, right now” and squeeze it hard.

Maybe our landscaping project is the best symbol of this year–by year’s end the hardscaping was done, the ground was turned over, the new plantings were in.  Trees, shrubs and flowers were all dormant, so we’ll need to wait to see how they all come to blossom.  We may need to add some annuals to the bare spots, may even need to transplant some new residents that don’t do well where we’ve placed them, but there’s an outline, a direction that’s clear, even if the implementation isn’t perfect.  It combines dreams and visions with the good feel of earth in our hands and it’s always a work in progress.

What plans for change are you making for the new year?

What experiences have you had of”ready, fire, aim”?

Have you ever experienced planning paralysis?  What has it kept you from doing?