Life Expands

Life expands and contracts in proportion to one's courage. Anais Nin

My life is feeling very expansive at the moment! I love that! I look back over the last month or so and I am extremely pleased by what I have accomplished. In just a little over 4 weeks I launched a new website and a business!

I've had the dream of doing both for a long time, but they stayed rather nebulous goals until I adopted a practice that I call the Weekly Manifesto. ("Manifest-o" - get it?)

Here's what it looks like: Every week I take out my notebook and record the answers to these 10 questions:

1. What have I accomplished this week? (I keep a gratitude journal and record my accomplishments nightly. I don't think I would be able to remember them all by the end of the week!)

2. What awakenings or breakthroughs have I had this week? What unexpected gifts did I receive? (Again, hopefully I have captured these in my daily journal.)

3. Is there anything I wanted to accomplish but didn’t? (When you get in the habit of this practice it will be easy to look back and see what you might have missed. If the action is still relevant, I put in in the list with my top priorities - #6.)

4. What challenges am I experiencing?

5. If I were coaching myself, what would I tell me about these challenges? (And then I always note an action to address the challenge in my top priorities for the next week.)

6. What are my top 3 priorities for the coming week? (At least one of these should come from my intentions, goals and dreams.)

7. If I could get nothing else done this week but ONE THING, what one thing would I choose to do? What one thing would make me most happy and proud? (I refer to #'s 6 and 7 consistently through the week to make sure I stay on focused and purposeful.)

8. How do I want to FEEL this week? Who do I want to BE?

9. What is (at least) one fun, joyous, delightful activity I can plan to do just for me?

10. Am I aware of any new, wonderful, creative, exciting ideas, dreams, goals, prospects that I want to add to my manifesto for future weeks?

I always do my manifesto on Sunday. But I've heard others like to do a weekly review like this on Friday. You will know what's best for you.

Here's an example of my manifesto in action:

On Sunday, April 19th I wrote for #3: I wish I saw more progress on my website.

When I wrote the statement I realized that I had been hoping that my husband would do it. He had agreed to do it the month before and yet not much was getting done. So I had been hoping for weeks.

I had put myself in a passive - and undesirable - position: I was relying on my husband to make this happen. And he's a busy guy with his own dreams to manifest. I realized that if I wanted this to get done, I would have to hire - and pay - professionals.

So then I knew that my #1 priority for the next week was going to be to find a company to design and build my website. (And then I broke it down in to daily actions: Talk to people I know who have a website - who did they work with? Call those sources, etc.)

And then at the end of the next week I was able to write "contracted with a website company" in my accomplishments! (Slab500 is fabulous by the way! I can't say enough good things about my experience working with them!)

So that is the Weekly Manifesto.

This week I am rejoicing in dreams made manifest.

By the way, have you seen my new website yet? Please do visit!

What awakenings, breakthroughs, or accomplishments have you had this week? Any unexpected gifts? Challenges? I'd love for you to share them - either here in the comments section or using the contact page at my website.