Having a Vision for the New Year of 2012

New years can be exciting – I know they are for me. It is like I have a whole book of blank pages that I get to fill in new and interesting ways. I get to decide some chapter titles that I would like to focus on and I get to fill in some blanks on the calendar to reflect those chapter titles. I can even write the story ending for the year leaving room for some wonderful surprises. How fun is that?? I find that couples really need to take the time to have a shared vision of their year ahead and yet few do this. They each have some unspoken and yet hardly formed ideas for what they would like for the year and yet they remain unspoken and undefined and therefore do not get realized. I recommend that couples find a night to go away (better yet a weekend) and make a vision for their year. Make sure you take the facts of your finances with you. Take a calendar with big squares (I know – pretty old fashioned – an actual paper calendar). Talk together about your individual dreams for yourselves, as well as how you would like to spend your year as a couple. Perhaps make titles for each of the parts of your lives individually and together. Then look at your dreams for your family and each individual child. While you are going through this process, endeavour to use this time to support each other in your wishes and dreams. Understand the layer beneath the words to your partners longings. Look at your time together and apart. Look at relationship time and family time and individual time. How would you like to balance those? How do you want to be together? How do you want to spend your money this year? What kind of experiences do you want your family to have? What kind of vacations do you want together? How do you want to reach out to your social circle? What would you like to contribute to your community or world as a couple or family? How will you develop the spiritual part of who you are as an individual and as a family? You get the picture. So many challenges could be avoided  and so much more meaning could be realized if you knew that you and your partner were on the same page, creating your year as a team, supporting each other in your individual goals and dreams as well as those you share. Write the story ending of the year now. In the year 2012, we were like this together, we did this etc etc. Many blessings to all the couples who read this blog this year!