aspirations – Josephine Moon

This year, I’ve set myself a word that is attainable, yet still challenging, for me.

Instead of setting new year’s resolutions, I have long chosen a ‘word of the year’ as an aspirational goal. It’s a word that might be about bringing something into reality, such as ‘abundance’ (that year worked out quite well for me, actually). It might be a word that sums up my highest pressing need, such as ‘rest’. That was my word for 2023, but I’m sorry to say, it was the absolute last thing that defined my year. 2023 couldn’t have been more at the opposite end of the ‘rest’ spectrum if it tried. Some years, I labour over choosing a word for a long time. This year, though, there was pretty much only one word that leapt to my mind.

FUN.

While last year’s hope for rest was a serious dumpster fire failure, fun is the antidote. If you can’t rest (and I’m pretty lousy at resting at the best of times), then the next best thing must surely be fun because fun gives you energy. Fun lightens everything. Fun flies in the face of dramas and difficulties and says, yeah, okay, that’s rotten, but I refuse to stay down there. Fun says ‘yes’ to life. Fun pulls us into the present moment. If scary roller coasters are your idea of fun, you’ll not be spending a second of that ride thinking about your debt, or the assignment you have due, or the fight you had with your spouse. Instead, you’ll be fully there, hanging on for dear life.

Of course, if you’re the kind of person who has fun easily and frequently, then that might not be the right word for you. I think the power of a word for the year lies in its ability to take us into areas we are struggling to reach, opening our minds and bringing in new experiences. The added benefit of fun is that it can be shared; it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Did you know that having fun is not an additional luxury but a basic human need? I read that recently (because now that I’m talking and writing about fun the internet is doing its thing and bringing me more things to read) and it kind of shocked me. I actually had a moment of feeling bad for my mind and body that I had denied it so much fun last year. This year, I will do better. But how? Practice, I assume.

Recently, I was chatting with Cheryl Akle from Better Reading and I mentioned my word of the year being fun and she quite reasonably asked me how I made sure I kept focus on my chosen word. I don’t, I confessed, which is why some years I just ‘get lucky’ with my chosen word and other years I ‘fail’ miserably. Thanks to Cheryl’s query, I have been putting some things in place to ensure the fun gets to be had. I might pop back and update you on that as the weeks go on.

For now, though, I wish you a happy new year that brings you the things you need this trip around the sun. And if you do have a word of the year, I’d love to hear it.

Jo x

It’s been a great year for me and it hasn’t been by accident. At the end of last year, I wrote down my reflections of the year, I pinpointed the things that went wrong and wrote strategies for how to avoid them or deal with them if it happened again. I wrote down all the great things that did happen and all the things I wanted to change. And I mapped it all out, both personally and professionally and then I executed it, month by month. And I did it all in Leonie Dawson’s Create Your Shining Year workbook.

You know how they always say that when you write something down it’s more likely to come true?

That is the value in year planning.

In my last post, I introduced you to the year planner that changed my life in 2015. In this post, I want to tell you about some of the things I wrote down in my year planner that came true, even when I thought they were just fanciful, fun dreams.

The funny thing about writing these things down was that, for the most part, I completely forgot about them. And then months later, when checking in, I stopped and went, wait a minute! I just did that! Better than that, often what I wrote down came true, yes, but in a way that was even BIGGER and BETTER than what I’d written.

Here’s some:

Get new author pics. I was lining up a friend or my sister to do this for me and then about two weeks after I wrote this, my publisher emailed out of then blue me asking if Allen & Unwin could organise this for me, with a professional photographer and a makeup and hair person. Whoa! Yes please! Thank you, A&U, you are generous and wonderful and make me look much better than I feel.
Do yoga. I wrote this down, thinking I’d like to do a class. But you know what? We did better. My husband and I decided we needed a private yoga teacher and it was possibly one of the best things we’ve ever done for ourselves.
Fly to Sydney to see my publisher and agent (for no other reason than to see them). I did this and it was great not only to catch up when things weren’t so hectic but because EXTRA things came directly out of the fact that I did that: (1) totally unexpectedly, I was invited to submit a manuscript for a children’s book that I’d been scribbling away on; (2) I got a new title for my next book, The Beekeeper’s Secret (thanks, Tom); and (3) I booked a flight to the UK! (see next point)
Fly to the UK. I did it! That one was totally a ‘wish list’/ ‘in your dreams’ thing and yet… it came true!
Pay off the mortgage. Okay, this one was also an ‘in your dreams’ thing. But the thing with this one is that I didn’t specify which house to pay off. In my head, I was thinking our family home. But what has happened is that our beautiful tenant has left our other property (our family home before this one), so we put it on the market and we’ve just got a contract for it and that will pay it off. So it’s all good.

I also invested in my business systems.

I changed my focus from social media and began a quarterly newsletter, and when I mentioned it to my publishers, they offered to help out with some prizes for some issues. (Did I mention how great they are?)
I made a book trailer for The Chocolate Promise / The Chocolate Apothecary.
I got a personal assistant. This was also an ‘in your dreams’ thing (almost laughable). But guess what? I did it! Only for a couple of hours a week, sure. But it is a great move and I’m so pleased I’ve done it.
I invested a lot more time into my financial bookkeeping systems, spreadsheets of what contracts are where and when reporting periods happen, actually went and found all my contracts (I know, I know). In other words, I really took the legal/financial stuff a lot more seriously and set up processes to help manage the growing correspondence about this. (Truly, I’ve no idea how authors who have ten or twenty books all published in different regions and with translation rights keep on top of it all. But since I do hope that will be me one day, I guess it’s best I try to figure it out now.)

The other great thing that happens when you start writing down not only what you want to happen, but also what does happen, and what unplanned successes came along, is that you get into the FLOW of synchronicity and more and more good things come your way.

Great surprises and beautiful blessings for the year of 2015

A New York agent took on The Chocolate Promise and is hopeful of selling it.
I have contracts for The Chocolate Promise to be translated for the German market!
Kim Wilkins (Kimberley Freeman) gave the most beautiful speech about me and my book at the launch of The Chocolate Promise this year and it will stay in my heart forever.
I received an ABIA nomination for The Tea Chest and my publishers flew me to Sydney to attend the awards.
I got to take my sister, nephew and Dad with me to the UK, for fantastic family support on my research trip there. Lots of gorgeous memories were made and I even got to tick off another of my year’s ‘fanciful’ things to do… play Canasta!!! (We are Canasta tragics in our house and spent many hours laughing ourselves silly over the cards in the Cotswolds).
I have learned so much about myself as a writer, woman, mother, creative and human being this year (and I’ll get to another post about that soon).

Leonie Dawson’s 2016 Shining Year Workbooks are on sale now but stocks are already running low. I cannot recommend them enough. You can choose just the personal life book, or the business book, or both, and you can get them in digital and print copies. They are a small investment in what could be a huge return on your dreams.

Leonie’s books get right to the heart of what it means to live, of what it means to have a business (the big ‘why’ of why we do what we do), of what it means to be alive and have dreams, and then grounds that in real visionary activities. I can’t wait for mine to arrive and to dive into planning the next beautiful year of my life.