Point to Ponder:
How will you spend the last 61 days of 2015?
by Neissa Brown Springmann
Whew, It’s November! And who doesn’t love November? Delicious temperatures, daylight savings (more sleep-YAY!), fall clothing, colorful foliage, and of course, time with family during the Thanksgiving holiday. While all of this makes my heart really happy, I get heart palpitations when I think about having only two months, i.e. sixty-one days left in the year, yet so much to do! How did that happen?!
I subscribe to several blogs and recently Austin-based Life Coach and Speaker, Renee Trudeau posted an excellent article on not only defining our life vision, but more realistically defining a vision for the next 90-days. In our case, that is the next sixty-one days, and because last week we determined what we’ve had enough of and will not include in our 2015 finale, the next step is to define and be intentional with how we spend our time throughout the next sixty-one days. Renee suggests these two questions for helping define your vision:
- What is uniquely mine to do? and
- What is the best use of my energy and talents in the next sixty-one days?
What I appreciate about Renee’s intentional strategy is the practicality of focusing on ninety or sixty days. It’s not overwhelming because I can actually see, feel and touch this time frame. In addition to answering those 2 questions and getting in the right frame of mind, Renee also recommends setting aside time in a distraction-free peaceful setting where you can create the following lists:
- List all activities that fuel you (activities that give you energy, nourish you, and make you feel alive)
- List all all activities that drain you (create physical tightness or discomfort in your back belly or neck every time they cross your consciousness). Often these “drains” are things like a financial issue that must be handled, a touchy conversation that you’ve been avoiding having, a disorganized office space at work or home, or a career issue that needs to be addressed
Address the ‘drains’ with an aggressive housecleaning mindset, giving yourself three options for handling each energy zapper:
1) “Just do it:” Set a deadline for when you can complete the project
2) Delegate It: Ask for help if needed, or outsource the task
3) Dump It: Walk away from the task or decide it isn’t going to happen (at least not in
the next sixty-one days)
Ultimately, the goal within the next sixty-one days is to not let life “just happen” or be filled with random action, enery-suckers and unfulfilling activities. Instead, let’s get the most out of it and make it great by striving to be prayerful and intentional about how we use our time, energy and talents. We can do this!
Action Item:
Create your 61-day plan by completing the activities suggested by Renee Trudeau:
1. Answer her 2 questions for defining your vision
2. Create your “fueling” and “draining” activities lists
3. Assign your “draining” activities one of the 3 categories above
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the iGnite blog 
I have a confession to make: Each Tuesday at 2:30 CST and on the phone I have a weekly business coaching session with my business coach and iGnite member Martha Lynn Mangum. With about ten minutes left in our time she referenced this week’s ’61-Day Plan’ journal and asked about my plan. Here’s where it gets interesting. Even though I wrote the journal with pure intention and agree with all of Renee Trudeau’s insight, wisdom and suggestion, being asked this question freaked me out. I told Martha I hadn’t given it a lot of thought and wasn’t sure I wanted to, as the idea of creating a ‘plan’ to accomplish anything beyond what I am currently doing totally stresses me out. As Martha always does, she very calmly said, “Let’s go back. Did you catch where you went with my question?”. It was at that exact moment I caught where my over-achieving and over-doing mindset went- and it went to ‘accomplish’. Without even knowing, when Martha said ‘plan’, my brain heard ‘plan to accomplish, achieve, do more and do better’. Now that is scary!
Then, Martha reminded me that one of the things she knew I was being intentional with was my prayer life, and that should definitely be part of my ’61-day plan’. She then encouraged me to simply focus on answering these two questions, that of course were in the journal….that I wrote (if I had an emoji it would be a confused looking smiley face)
1). What is uniquely mine to do?
2). What is the best use of my energy and talent?
There’s no doubt that in this scenarios I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. It is for this exact reason and example we must surround ourselves with wise council. The truth is that we can’t see what we can’t see, but our trusted wise council CAN!
Thank you, Martha, for helping me see the forest for the trees and for helping me see that my 61-day plan doesn’t have to have anything to do with making plans to accomplish and achieve!
Neissa
Ps, pls comment if you had a similar reaction to the ’61-day plan’ journal or if you have another relative share