Tag: new year

How to Achieve Your Goals in 2017: A Step-by-Step Guide to a VISION QUEST

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond1 Comment

I had the good fortune to take a walk recently with my friend Abbie Schiller, CEO and co-Founder of The Mother Company. We walked along the beach path, the vast ocean our soundtrack.

We talked about what sparked her to create The Mother Company — her passionate desire for quality children’s entertainment that would support parents’ efforts to raise kind, well-adjusted kids. She and a partner envisioned it, planned it, worked hard, and created it.

Then we talked about the how. She told me about her “Vision Quest” practice, a way of dreaming and planning that she credits for helping get control of her life. The idea: Plan a mini-retreat with a trusted friend, bring a paper and pen, dream of what you would like to achieve, and write down concrete deadlines and goals for how you’re going to do it. She wrote about her 2016 process here, with helpful step-by-step instructions. This past year her goals ranged from making new friends to winning an Emmy for The Mother Company’s “Ruby’s Studio” TV show. Guess what? Both accomplished.

The close of one year and birth of new one is the perfect time to try a Vision Quest. I have resolved to set aside time for it after the kids go back to school. I’m already mulling possible goals — complete my second novel, or perhaps even sell it? Travel more? Connect with friends more often, in person or on the telephone, instead of texting or not at all?

I’m so grateful that Abbie and I had that walk, and I’m very happy to share Abbie’s Vision Quest article with you. My new year’s wish for you: May you make all your dreams come true. 

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The Only Three Words You Need

Published on by Laura Nicole Diamond6 Comments

Every year I go to Rosh Hashanah services with expansive hope, born out by experience, that some wisdom and truth from our tradition will land softly on my heart and I will take it with me through the next year as comfort and north star.

Reading earlier posts from this time of year, I marvel at how much has remained constant, though so much has changed. In this post from seven years ago, Christopher and I wanted to greet the new year at the ocean, while our kids refused to budge. The same was true yesterday, but now our boys are plenty old enough for us to wave goodbye without grandparents materializing at our front door to babysit, as they did years ago. In fact, so much time has passed that the rabbi’s sermon this year about ethical driving (practicing “patience, gratitude, and forgiveness” behind the wheel) arrived at the perfect moment for our 15-year-old firstborn’s ears.

For me, the wisdom and truth I longed for this year came in a brief comment by our rabbi. She mentioned that the author Anne Lamott has written there are only three prayers: Help. Thanks. Wow. This became my simple and complete prayer. I stood with my eyes closed and silently repeated these words instead of the pages of prayers in my hands. “Thank you thank you thank you thank you.”

There it was, instantly. A physical transformation, a steady flow of peace. Thank you thank you thank you thank you — for this loving, brilliant man standing by my side; for the blossoming young man next to him; for the kind, curious boy at home nursing a cold while watching (inappropriate) cartoons. Thank you thank you thank you thank you. And for the challenges I have to face, Help me help me help me help me.

I do love December 31st, how we light up the darkest night sky with twinkly lights and candles and fireworks. And I love our Jewish New Year’s Eve in Autumn, when there’s still enough light to see the world by, to embrace it and thank it for its beauty, its blue sky above brown California mountain ridges, its temperate Pacific waves tumbling toward me as I gather up my burdens and transfer them to a handful of bread crumbs or shells and let them fly into the ocean.

For all of this, the gratitude and the challenges, the beauty of these people and this earth, the final prayer…Wow.

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