Positive Planning is the fun way to Organise!

For the last 6 months I've been meeting once a month to spend the evening with these lovely, crazy ladies:

Though they're not normally in such extravagant costumes!

Each month we've been having a 'Positive Planning' session, trying to sort our lives out a little by aiming for the good things and plotting out ways to get to them. they may be career related, or to do with anything in life, like holiday dreams, or goals to be more confident.

It all started because we were all feeling a bit haphazard toward the end of 2011, and I remembered a course that me and Rosie had been to a couple of years before, that was about planning our craft careers. At the time it surprised us how we made revelations about what we wanted from life, and how to get them, in a short session. Here's my original 5 year plan from that workshop (the paper has discoloured over the years):

Some of the things are working well, I've had another baby, and learnt to drive! But other plans have changed drastically, so we decided it was time to try and re-create the session for ourselves.

The three of us sat down together, with some questions that Rosie remembered from the session, and a few other questions that Ali and I came up with. The idea is to give yourself 2 minutes, no longer, to answer all these questions - the time limit helps you do it without over-thinking it. The questions we used were:

• What do you wish there was more of in your life?
• What do you wish there was less of?
• What are 5 things you value the most?
• What internal barriers are stopping you from reaching your goals?
• What external barriers are stopping you?
• What are the positives in your life (for example your personal qualities, or the resources you have available to you)?
• What steps could you take to achieve your dreams?
• What are the 3 things you most want to achieve?

Then from this, you make a plan, with connecting paths of the steps you can take to reach your goals:

It can be as creative as you like!

You might end up with all kinds of other notes too, for example I had a page about where I wanted to go with my blogging / crafting, because I had to get that plotted out in my mind:

We set each other goals each month - the aim is to take small steps that could eventually lead to bigger things, for example, one of my goals was to learn to drive, so one of my steps each month was to take more lessons.

They can also be steps to plan more, or to discuss things with other people. One of my goals one month was to talk to my husband about sharing the housework out more, a goal another month was to ask someone to babysit so we could have a night out!

Rosie has been very nice and given me and Ali stars for when we've completed our tasks:

And we've started to make them for her too.

It's so nice doing this with someone else, as we often end up having a lot of giggles while we plan stuff out, but it also gives us someone to commiserate with if something isn't working. Telling someone else about your goals also means you're accountable for trying to reach them too - you have someone to say to you 'did you do that thing? because you know you want to!'

Do you make plans for your life? If you don't have anyone to discuss it with, then why not blog about it and ask your readers to keep asking you how it's going?

Remember that a comment on this post, or on any of my posts from this weekend, will count as an entry into the Grand Giveaway {NOW CLOSED}- but only if you've registered your interest in winning that here!

I'll be back at 8pm with another giveaway! x

Tweet

Pin It