Here we are – the other side of the holidays. We all feel the excitement of a new beginning – I get it doubly because my birthday is also over the holidays, so I am really primed for a fresh start. And I’ve already set some intentions for what I’d like to create this year.

So have you made a resolution to create the Love Relationship you desire in 2017? Or some other resolution or goal for the New Year?

I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and this year I feel many experts’ advice is to actually NOT make a New Year’s Resolution. Statistics show that 80% of New Year’s resolutions are broken by Super Bowl Sunday, and only 5% of us reach our goals by the end of the year.

That sounds like a good reason not to bother with New Year’s resolutions. What’s the use if you won’t be successful? So how then do we go about creating true, lasting change?

Last year, I wrote about how to make a Smart New Year’s resolution. As we know, it’s the Shadow that sabotages our New Year’s resolutions, and last year’s article explained what you can do about it.

This year I decided to create a New Year’s Visioning process for you. Rather than making a mental decision / resolution – which does not have the heart or subconscious involvement to help you follow through on it – the Visioning process is based on listening to your Inner Guidance to catch a Vision of how your Higher Self / Soul would like to express through your life this year. I hope you had a chance to use it and to leave a comment on my blog page or on my Facebook page to let me know how it went.

Saturday, I had the opportunity to sit in on a wonderful webinar by Christine Arylo about how to Dream Differently. I thought I would share my biggest takeaway from it, which will also help you create lasting change in your life.

Christine explained how a dream passes through 4 stages:

1. Fire – this is the initial spark, the creative idea you get when you get an excitement about something you’d like to initiate.
2. Water – this is the step where you sit with the initial spark and deepen with it, feeling your feelings about it, listening to your intuition about it. This is where you arrive at Wisdom.
3. Air – this represents the thoughts you start thinking about how to take action on your initial spark, and start making your plans. If you sat with the idea long enough, these plans are informed by a deeper Wisdom.
4. Earth – this is where you take action and effectively bring your creative idea to fruition.

The trouble is that in Western society, we are taught to move directly from having an initial spark / creative idea, into planning it out and taking action on it. We are not taught the 2nd step – how to sit with the idea, deepening into it, feeling into it, listening to our intuition / Inner Guidance about it. Without this step, our thoughts and actions will not be informed by Wisdom, and often our actions are fruitless, or we don’t follow through with the action and stay committed to it.

So this New Year’s I encourage you to write down the changes you would like to see in your life and sit with them. Christine says that in most earth-based traditions, January is considered the Dreaming Month, so you get the entire month to consider what changes you truly want to commit your Life Force to. You may find that some changes / intentions fall away and with others, you have stronger intention and clarity. Then by February 2nd, after Mid-Winter, you are ready to plant that seed and start taking action.

I hope that helps you clarify your intentions for the New Year! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or on my Facebook page. I wish you an entire MONTH of joyous Dreaming and Intention-Setting!