There is a disturbing amount of space and eternity in the old growth redwoods.

Disturbing because, as my BFF said in her blog post today, stillness and silence means that you can’t hide behind your addictions, you can’t hide behind your busy, you can’t hide behind the distractions with which you’ve been self-medicating.

In the silence, you can’t avoid the real.

So to begin my annual personal retreat, to end a year and begin the rest, I traveled to the woods and wandered.

I abandoned the facade I had been propped up behind.

I found myself again, in that ancient space.

Mid day, I stopped along a creek because I knew something was to come.

And there, inside the Northern California coastal fog, I heard what really happened last year.

Last year, I grew up. Realized that life, that this world, is not black and white.

I found humility. Surrendered. Relaxed. Got quiet and still.

I let go of control. Stopped waiting for control.

I started to pray.

I started to forgive.

I became aware of the criticism.

I found empathy and compassion. For them. For myself.

I learned how to trust.

I learned how to ground, center, hold space, wait, open, receive.

I let go.

That even though I felt like I didn’t get as much done as I should have (which is not really true, I later realized I got tons accomplished last year), what I needed to take place in this journey did happen.

I did the most important thing possible. I did what was necessary.

I grew.

But of course the journey did not end there.

The next day I spent in a motel room bed, watching television (the prevalence of reality show programming is fascinating) and suffering from a migraine and the side effects of the medications required to keep it at bay.

But I wasn’t upset.

I didn’t feel like I was wasting time on my retreat. I knew that in that moment, what I needed was for my body to process what had happened.

I needed to just be.

Then I woke up and returned to the woods.

I found a stone bench in the middle of a grove and just sat.

I asked.

What do I need this year?

How do I need to grow?

What do I need more of in my everyday life?

I felt it through me, surrounding me, permeating the branches and the moss and coming up through the decaying logs and needles underfoot.

Peace.

I need to learn how to bring peace into my life. Every day. To exist in a peaceful, serene, centered and grounded state.

To have Peace be my daily life, instead of just my vacation.

I returned to the small town of my temporary residence (which of course has a Starbucks, can’t escape that, lol), sat down in a booth with a grande coffee with 5 raw sugars and my laptop.

I wrote. 

I wrote dozens of journal pages replying to my annual retreat writing prompts, revealing who I was last year, who I am right now, and who I want to be.

I recommitted to what my life is about.

I decided how I am going to grow this year.

And I determined how I’m going to do it.

Yes, I’ll be sharing more about the EveryDay project that I’ve committed to this year, in the weekly video blogs, on the daily LYTD podcast, and in future blog posts.

And next week I’ll share more about the Live Your Truth Guide to Your Annual Retreat, where I’m giving you the exact process I went through last week and how you can create it in your own life (including the behind the scenes details of my journal prompt responses and my 2012 plan).

In the meanwhile, for today … here is the thing.

Before you can know anything, before you can hear a voice from a higher power, before you can listen to your own intuition or find the truth or know what you already know deep in your soul, you need something.

You need space.

Silence.

Time.

Connection to the eternal.

Whether you find that connection in the old growth redwoods or a church service or hot yoga or running a marathon or flying a plane across the sky, you must make your connection.

To remember your truth, you must create space for your truth.

#thatisall

Did you do a personal retreat or annual review? What process did you use?

What are your words, goals, vision, themes, resolutions, commitments for 2012?

Please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you!

Related posts:

1. Beginnings Require Ends.

But my theory is that great change, the big goals, the transformation of a life, does not happen in projects or goals or the grand objectives.

Great change happens in the EveryDay.

Related posts:

1. How to Change the World
2. The “Tell Me More” Project: How to Make Human Connections in a Digital World
3. What I Found in the Wood.

It is that time of year.

Whether it’s in the blog post I just read about a last week of December journal-a-thon, or my client yesterday afternoon who shared how she is working on her 2012 goals, it’s time to create the next plan, the next set of goals, to begin everything that will come to be in the coming year.

I feel that shift.

The standing on the precipice, that tension that builds on the edge of grand release of creation.

But I have not begun to plan 2012. Yet.

Yes, I have tons of ideas and outlines and goals and dreams and desires – coming up with ideas is never the problem for me.

But … before I can sit down to create the 2012 plan, before I can begin everything that will come next … I need to end.

Before anything new can be brought into existence, a void must be created into which it will be born.

So, to that end, I am finalizing documents, purging stuff, mourning hurts, forgiving wrongs, recognizing resistance, releasing tension, accepting truth.

I am letting them go – the illusion of control, the idea that I can be perfect, the belief that there is a magic pill that can be swallowed, the theory that I can make them love, like, accept, understand, appreciate, respect me.

I am opening up a space inside of me, naked and raw and vunerable – opening my hands unto God and the universe and the energies that flow all around us – taking a deep breath – and surrendering into the quiet expanse.

I have faith that the answers, that the plan, will come.

And in the least likely ways, I imagine.

So the last week of December you will find me roadtripping to somewhere different and quiet, somewhere they serve coffee and eggs for breakfast, where they say hi to strangers on the street, where there are trees and sky and water and the fresh smell of earth.

I’ll be there working on finishing and emptying and space creating. I’ll be reviewing all my ideas, feeling how each of them resonate with my soul and living your truth and bringing acceptance to the world. I’ll be opening myself up to whatever is the next.

We shall see what impossibilities can happen.

I’ll let you know.

–

How are you planning for 2012?

Are you reflecting on this year and clearing stuff out? Are you doing a big end-of-the-year retreat, are you meeting with a coach or are you working through a system? Do you create an annual plan or set of goals or themes for the year, or do you just flow with what comes?

Related posts:

1. What I Found in the Wood.
2. The Cavewoman Inside

Goals don’t suck for everyone, but they do for me.

Because when I set goals (earn $x or have x# of clients or get x# of visitors to my website by x month) I just sit around feeling lame and frustrated that I did not meet that goal already (“I should be there by now, so and so has already done that, I’ve been trying so long without it happening” etc.), as opposed to the goal somehow creating focus and motivation for me to actually do something.

So I stopped setting mid/long term goals. (And made a video about it.)

Meanwhile, lots of amazing stuff happened. (And terrible, and dramatic, and quiet, and pretty much everything in the human experience.)

But in the last week, I read two things that made me revisit the whole goal sucks theory.

First, Chris Guillebeau wrote in his newsletter about how his old goal was to write for 10,000 people, and now he’s moved on to writing for 100,000 people. And I liked that idea – of knowing how big you want the circle of influence to be.

Then I read the blog post Don’t Get Real. Get Ridiculous. by Kendra Kinnison, about setting completely insane long term goals. Things like making a machine that will fly human beings, which until 1903, was deemed highly unlikely to ever be accomplished.

Here’s how Kendra says to set goals: “Quit thinking about what’s possible right now. Focus on the ridiculous goals that you can accomplish if you’ll commit your passion and energy for a sustained period of time. Then go do it.”

So I thought – what’s a completely insane, ridiculous goal I have for Living Your Truth? What could we do together, given enough time and sustained effort?

Here’s what flew into my mind:

Wake Up 100,000 People to the Real World. Inspire Their Moment. Empower Them to Live Their Truth.

And I’m cool with doing that directly, or indirectly. Especially because really that’s what I do – I attract other evangelists, other people who are also spreading a message. And by empowering them to live their truth, they spread their version of that message to all kinds of other people.

So if we assume that each person I influences turns around and influences at least 100 people on average, that means I only need to directly cause 1000 people to wake up to the real world & live their truth.

And then I thought to myself … hum. I might have already done that.

Or I might already be close.

As of today, I have 14,000+ twitter followers and 3000+ newsletter subscribers. Last month (September 2010) I had 5033 absolute unique visitors to this website (per Google Analytics).

Presumably, some of those people actually read my stuff. And some of them are affected by it, some have had their moment, some are now living their truth (or have started that journey), and some have passed that on to others in their f2f lives or twitter streams, influencing them to live their own truth.

So instead of 100,000 people … maybe this goal is about 1 million. Or 10 million.

Given enough time and effort, complete ridiculousness becomes completely doable.

The Wright Brothers took 7 years from when their little research project transformed into the first sustained human flight.

So, how many people do you think we could wake up to live their truth by 2017?

Related posts:

1. Why I’m Not Setting Goals or Picking Words for 2010
2. Goals Suck!

These decisions seem completely unreasonable.

The program makes money. The book was already printed. The website got google organic traffic.

But sometimes the only way to move forward is to let things go.

Is there anything in your business that’s distracting you from what you really want to be doing?

What’s in your business that’s leftover from who you were yesterday?

What do you need to let go of so you can be 100% yourself?

Related posts:

1. How to Make Money By Getting Nothing Done
2. Taking off My Spanx (How Letting Go of Perfection Will Set Me Free)
3. Top 5 Websites I Use in My Small Business