Align Your Year
Align Your Year
It’s that time of the year.
The new year may just be a line in the sand, a day we give special meaning; and yet, any time is useful for regrouping and going a bit more for what we want, need, or long for.
Maybe you made new year resolutions, and maybe they are working out. Or may be they have already been broken.
Do you have dreams for this year?
Or have some things that are ready to go, “enough of this already”?
Perhaps some fruits that are ripening?
This is an invitation to feel into how good things could be, and take inspiration from there.
It is not “instead” of planning, dreaming, resolving. It is alongside it: a way to orient from aliveness and alignment, and not only from effort and should’s.
This article is a version of our “Align Your Life” process, for this year that is starting. Here you’ll find a step-by-step guide to a practice of Aligning Your Year.
If this speaks to you, I (Alex) I am hosting free a workshop Saturday, January the 17th, 17-19h CET.
How to do this
- Time: 30-45 minutes (or split it across a few days).
- Tools: paper + pen/pencil.
- Scale: 0-10, go with your gut (0 = awful, 10 = ideal) (xxx confusing when i go from ‘time’ and ‘tools’ to ‘scale’ and ‘parts’: am i meant to have a physical scale, am I meant to have pre mapped my parts? Just noting what came to my mind instantly…)
What you’re aiming for is not “the perfect plan”, but a felt sense of what alignment tastes like for you, and a few practical hints that might naturally follow.
This is the basic outline. We will:
- check where we are
- check how things went last year
- appreciate the highlights, the good parts of last year (if they are recent, it is often easier to extend them into the present year)
- extend the exploration to the last few years
- apply the above to our whole life so far
- then to the future: how good things could be?
- and then back to what this year could be
What follows are more detailed instructions in case you’re not joining my workshop.
Follow as much as you want, as little as you feel, and add what feels your own.
1. Start from where you are
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
a. Whole picture
Look at the whole picture of your life right now. I find it useful to look at different aspects. Yours could be different: consider the below a starting point:
How are you doing regarding:
- health (body, energy, sleep, nervous system)
- love (connection, intimacy, friendship, relationships)
- craft (work, skill, creating, competence)
- play & juiciness (fun, aliveness, pleasure)
- meaning & contribution (service, purpose, impact)
You can find more info about those in the original Align Your Life article.
How did each go/ feel? Give a number for each. Do not overthink it.
If different parts of you hold different opinions, invite them to share. If you feel like it, write the numbers with different colors, from different points of view, eg:
- “That was really fun, but not that healthy or useful.”
- “I felt really good about showing up and being in service, but damn, it was hard.”
Stay a moment with how the year felt, as a whole.
b. Highlights of the year
Now take the highlights: maybe the best couple of months of last year.
How did they go? What are the numbers for each of them?
Do there need to be different highlights for different aspects of life?
Were the best months for play different from the best months for meaning?
At times we discover, looking back, that when we allowed ourselves to really shine, we were also the most giving. Or that what felt like “being in service” was also for ourselves. That working hard was really fun. That we kept healthy. Maybe.
If it was not, maybe it could have been. Maybe.
If so, let the most critical parts know. You do not need to convince them: just invite them to take in the experiences, maybe get inspired, and share back.
Questions / invitations:
- What were the moments where most of you felt aligned and alive?
- What were the moments when the fun parts (xxx of the experience or parts like parts?) were also the healthiest, and the most meaningful?
- When was doing the work, the craft, actually life-giving or healthy or fun?
Invite the memories.
Stay with how it felt in your whole system.
If it works for you, give numbers to the highlights. 1
Pause again. Let different parts take note, maybe get inspired, and share with you.
2. Extend to several years back
Extend the whole process to the last few years.
How did it feel when things were better, or good, or great?
Tread gently: there could be grief here.
If so, see if you can honor it. If you suspect it could be too much to bear, do not force yourself to go there. Maybe invite 5% of the feeling.
And yet, even with grief and pain: did anything good happen, was there something good experienced?
Again: notice how it felt.
Have a look at the whole picture again:
Does it feel right to give numbers to the different aspects?
Nudge your memory toward times when more aspects of you were aligned: play with meaning, love with career, work and service.
Stay with how it felt.
See if any part wants to take notice, get inspired, or share more.
3. Briefly (or not) extend to your whole life
Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash
Expand the space of exploration. Go back: not just a few years or a decade, but allow the whole shape of your life into it.
What was life-giving as a child, as a young person, when searching, when finding?
How did the highlights feel? How did it feel to be you during those times?
Again: be gentle. There could be a lot of grieving here. Or shame.
Or a feeling of wrongness: “I lost it”, “I ruined it somehow”.
Honor those parts, and ask them, softly, if they would allow you to also feel how good it was, if it was good.
If you suspect it’s too much to receive, ask for a small fraction.
Or bookmark to explore with support: a friend, a therapist, a coach.
If it makes sense, give another go at giving numbers.
Invite any part that is willing to take notice, and be inspired.
Ask them to share back.
And again: nudge the exploration toward times when most of your life was aligned, when pleasure fed meaning and love and craft and health, or the other way around, or all together.
4. Expand to how it could be
How could things be in the future?
How good could it be, knowing how it went?
Is anything ready to ripen, to happen?
Is there any part heartbroken or angry because “this doesn’t seem to be our lot in this life”, whatever “this” and “our lot” and “this life” is?
What if it could be? How would it feel?
What part of an old dream could be experienced, in a real way?2
Also note: being a pop star comes with drawbacks.
What would it be for things to be as good as it gets, you being you?
Stay with the whole picture:
- What would the different aspects be like?
- How could they feed each other?
Invite the possibility. Feel into it.
Allow your system to taste how it would feel.
Invite any skeptical part to join, and if they can, to wait and experience before sharing.
Give numbers again, if that makes sense.
Have a look at what emerged.
Anything inspiring?
Anything that goes “yes, let’s do it” or “well, maybe now we can stop that, if we get to enjoy that other thing”?3
5. And now for this year
Gently come back to the here and now.
Hi, welcome back.\ There is ground under you (or floors, but there is probably ground under them, unless you are reading this on a spaceship4).
Now go to the end of the year: it has been an amazing year.\ It went as well as it could go, given the curveballs that the universe tends to throw at us.
Maybe even better.
“Oh wow, I did not expect this to feel like this!”
Some aspects of your life could be much better.
Some others could be just the way they are now, but more integrated.
Stay there.
Stay with how it feels, as a whole.
Then, if it feels meaningful: give numbers again to the different aspects of life.
Also give numbers to the highlights you can already sense.
Maybe that planned trip will be high in play: what could be needed so that the busy worker parts could welcome it and enjoy it?
Maybe you can look forward to a few weeks of hard work getting everything in order, with your eyes on the prize of really going for fun afterwards?
Maybe much of the year will need to be dedicated to service, re-building, mending, hard work.
In what way could that feel like a joy: yes, hard, but bringing something good?
Are there specks of juiciness that can be sprinkled onto that?
Invite all parts, if possible even the ones that disagree with each other: the ones that want to just have fun, the ones that cannot stop ruminating about work, the ones we all feel uncomfortable to have in our system (but they are there).
What if they could work together this year?
My own inner image is having lots of weirdos in the team.5
When properly motivated, they can work really hard.
Maybe not in the way the most prudish managers would want, but in the same general direction.
What I like inviting is this:
in the same way that stress and hardening kills play and fun, anything done in the spirit of fun and pleasure does not feel like harsh work.
It can be hard, like a hard workout, or an intense game.
The same for meaning.
For healthy living.
For everything, really.
One last time (for now):
stay with how it feels, how it could feel.
The whole of it, holding itself together: a beautiful mosaic.
If anything concrete emerges, jot it down, and come back to the feeling.
If any part gets inspired, thank them, invite them to share, and come back to the sense of things going as well as possible.
If any group of parts looks around and goes “hey, we could work together on this, it sounds like fun/meaningful/useful/healthy/heart-opening”, take note.
If you can, promise to enable it, and ask them what they would need.
Enjoy the feeling of what could be an amazing year.
And now...
Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash
See if you want to take notes:
- any direction that wants to be explored
- anything that needs to get out of the way, or be embraced in a new way
That’s it, really.
May this be an amazing year. May you enjoy, love, and thrive in making it happen, to the best of your possibilities.
Again: if this inspires you, I am hosting free a workshop Saturday, January the 17th, 17-19h CET.
Or you can book one of the two of us for 1:1 sessions.
1 I mostly think about something that had some duration: at least a few weeks, not just half a day. But half a day can also be a pointer, a lighthouse.
2 We cannot all be pop stars, but is there something in that dream that could be lived?
3 I am being vague on purpose. It is your life.
4 If so, thank you, and please leave a comment.
5 This is my inner team, don’t judge. Also, I am used to building things at events like Burning Man: people using power tools in the most improbable outfits is kind of normal for me.