As 2012 is coming to an end, I find myself preparing for my customary end of year ritual. At the end of every year, I set aside some time and prepare myself vibrationally for the year to come. I generally do this while on my annual New Year’s Spa Holiday, because that’s an environment that just makes it so damn easy for me to be in a high vibrational state, but I could just as easily do this while sitting on the couch at home.

The purpose of this process is threefold:

1. I take stock of where I am in terms of manifestations and vibration. What have I accomplished so far? What did I successfully line up with in the past year? What did I learn?
2. I create my plan for the coming year (a bit like goal setting). What do I want to manifest going forward? Have my plans changed from the last year? If so, how? I stop and regroup, so to speak, to make sure my priorities match my desires.
3. I take the time to align with the plan I created.

Of course, the end of the year isn’t the only time I do this kind of review. I constantly pay attention to what I want and whether I’m moving towards it or not. I’m aware that desires change and grow, and that each manifestation I line up with has the potential to make we want to move in a new direction I didn’t even see before. But for me, this end of the year review is like a strategic planning session, where I outline the general direction in which I want to go in every area of my life. It creates the underlying structure. The details of how I want to fill that structure in might change, sometimes drastically, but the underlying core desires don’t really shift all that much. This end of year process is about the big picture, and it sets me up nicely for the whole year.

Isn’t this just goal setting?

So, you may be wondering why I bother doing this. Isn’t this just like goal setting? We all kind of set our intentions at the beginning of each year (they’re called New Year’s resolutions), and that doesn’t seem to work all that well. How exactly is this different?

Here’s how: I don’t just intellectually decide on a few arbitrary tasks that I want to do or stop doing, which don’t have much to do with what I really want anyway. No one wants to quit smoking. They want to quit smoking for a reason. No one wants to go on a diet. They don’t even want to lose weight. Losing weight is a means to an end. I focus on my core desires.

And (and this is the real difference), I get myself vibrationally aligned with what I want. I do the energy work. It’s not about taking action or depriving myself of something or being disciplined or forcing myself to do something. It’s about using my true power. And that, ladies and gentlemen, works like gangbusters. Manifestations just come flooding in at the beginning of the year, thanks to the energy work I do on my holiday. I create a massive amount of momentum that I then just have to keep going. I other words, I do the work and then my only job is to not get in the way.

There’s a reason why I take time out of my busy spa holiday schedule of sauna and facials and massages to sit and do this process. It freaking works. Ready to hear all about how I do it? Of course you are. Here we go:

Step 1 – The Year End Review

Now, when most people do a kind of year end review, they look at what went right over the past year for about two milliseconds, and spend the rest of the time looking at what went wrong. “Let’s dissect where we screwed up,” they say, “so that it never, ever happens again.” Fair enough. That’s one philosophy, but it’s not one supported by the Laws of the Universe. When you understand LOA, you get that focusing on your mistakes and on the outcomes you didn’t like just brings more of those to you. In other words, if you spend the majority if your time looking at how you screwed up, you will create more opportunities to screw up in the future. I like to take a different approach.

1. First, I take a look at my list from last year.
2. I review which items I manifested. I spend some time remembering all my amazing manifestations, really appreciating what went right and reminding myself of what a powerful creator I am. This is not only super fun, it really raises my vibration and puts me in the perfect position to do some world class manifesting.
3. I briefly review which items I didn’t manifest. Some of these items didn’t manifest because my focus shifted and they are no longer important to me. I just drop those. The rest generally didn’t manifest because I have some resistance that’s blocking them. In that case, I almost always ended up releasing at least some of that resistance during the past year. In other words, I look for progress of any kind, not just finished manifestations. I point out to myself how much closer I am to getting what I want, how much better I’m able to feel about that subject, how far I’ve come in the past year. Then, I bask in the glow of all those accomplishments, the full manifestations, the partial manifestations and the releasing of any resistance.

At this point, I’m generally in a fantastic mood. I might take a couple of days to do this exercise, remembering all the triumphs from the past year, going through my journal and looking for accomplishments and things to feel good about. Notice how very different that is from looking at myself in the mirror and lamenting that I STILL want to lose ten pounds, or STILL haven’t cleaned out the basement or whatever.

Step 2 – Planning 2013

I’m now ready for step number two – planning the new year. This is not a To Do list and it’s not a traditional list of goals. As I already said, this is more of a strategic plan and it’s very much created with LOA in mind. I make a list of all the major areas of my life, for example:

• My Business
• My Love/Sex Life
• My Family
• My Home
• My Body/Health
• Adventure/Just for Fun

I then set the strategy that I’d like to follow for each of these areas. By strategy, I mean the basic end goal I’d like to achieve in the next year, and how I want it to feel. Remember that we’re looking at core desires here, not super detailed to do lists. How detailed I ultimately get depends entirely on how much resistance I have in that area. If all is going well, I can get more specific. My vibration on that topic is clean and the specifics feel good. If I have a lot of resistance and I’m nowhere near to what I want, I have to stay very, very general. Trying to define details would just trigger my fears around not knowing how those details would come about and my memories of not achieving those details in the past. That would align me more with the resistance than with what I want. Bottom line: The plan I come up with has to feel really, really good. If something feels off, I back up a little and scratch off the details.

So, using my example list above, let me break down how I might come up with my 2013 plan:

My Business: Since my business is already going really well, and I feel great about it and my ability to keep growing it, I can get more specific on this topic.

Very general would be: “Keep growing the business.” That feels great. But I can get much more specific than that and still feel great.

So, I try: “Take my business to the 7 figure level in 2013.” Hmm, that makes my stomach feel a bit weird. Is it possible? Yes, sure. But it feels just a little bit too big. How about “Take my business to the $500.000/year or higher level.” Yes, that feels good. It’s still a stretch goal, and I have no idea at the moment how I’ll do that (but that doesn’t matter), but it feels exciting and only a little bit scary.

I add a few more details to my goals, just because they feel good:

• Get my website redesigned professionally and make it look kick ass!
• Get into Kindle publishing
• Build up the membership site

Notice how none of these goals contain the HOW. It’s not “Build up the membership site by doing this or that.” Nope. I just state my intention.

But, how do I choose my intentions? I start with what I want – to grow my business. I figure out why I want to do that. In my case, I want to reach as many people as possible and give them a chance to turn into Happy Shiny Puppies (if they want to). I love the idea of playing on a bigger playground and connecting with tons of people. When I sit with that intention for a while and let my energy align with it, I start to manifest more details in my vision. I see myself publishing books, but that feels a little further away. Then, the thought popped in: “Publish a Kindle book!” and it felt awesome. I saw myself searching in Amazon and finding my name there. It felt doable and close and fun. THIS is how I choose my general intentions. They are built from my daydreams and thoughts that feel really, really good.

Let’s use another example, one where I can’t get as specific yet:

My Home: I love my current apartment, but I feel like it’s time for the next phase in my living arrangements. So, I’ve decided that I’d like to move this year. In this case, I’m not yet entirely sure what I want, so my intention list is more a list of criteria (built by listing the opposite of what I don’t want).

I want

• a three+ bedroom apartment (one bedroom, one office and one guest room)
• two bathrooms, one with a large bathtub
• a large terrace or garden
• central heating and air conditioning (the AC is not as important as the heating), and insulation/good windows so the heat actually stays in the house (can you tell that it’s a lack of current heating that caused me to put this on the list?)
• etc, etc, you get the  idea.

Notice that the location of the apartment is not listed. Why not? Because I don’t really care. I want to live somewhere with nice weather, and I adore Barcelona, but I’m also becoming aware that my criteria for where I want to live is changing. I love the idea of having more nature around me. Do I want to live in the country side? Not really. The idea of that brings up resistance, so I back off. I love the city. There’s an apparent paradox there, but I don’t worry about that. I know that the Universe has the ability to bring me what I want, and that in this moment, I’m not clearly able to define what I want for myself. When I try, I get all frustrated and start to list all the reasons why this or that won’t work. This is where trust comes in. I don’t even try to figure out where in the world I could live that could offer me everything I want in a place to live (the criteria I’m conscious of as well as the stuff I forgot that I want, but still want). I focus on those few bits I can clarify for myself and mostly decide on how I want it to feel.

So, I see open windows, clean, warm air flooding in, birds singing, something green (could be a rooftop garden, a real garden or a forest), loads of light and space, peace and serenity, etc. I only fill in the details that I have easy access to (like the fact that I want a guest room and an office, so I want at least three bedrooms), and leave the rest, like location, if it’s a house or an apartment, if it’s a city or a town, etc, to the Universe. It knows exactly what I want. I don’t have to define the details, I just have to get into the feeling. And any details that help me to get into that feeling make it on the list. Everything else is irrelevant.

Step 3 – Alignment

If I’ve done Step 1 and Step 2 well, then Step 3 is a breeze. All I have to do is to take some time and focus on each of the areas I’ve defined. Then, I create a vision out of the intentions I’ve set, which should be easy, given that the intentions generally are borne out of a visualization exercise in the first place. I take at least 30 minutes per area (but usually much, much more) working up a vision that gets me all tingly and makes me want to punch the air and do a happy dance. Again, if I’ve properly raised my vibration using my manifestational accomplishments from the last year, this is easy and fun.

So, taking my business as an example, I might see myself at my desk, where I do all my work, smiling and laughing and doing my in the chair happy dance that I so often do while on the phone with clients. I could see myself writing (no details) and feeling incredibly inspired, with the words just pouring out of me onto the page. I might see my Kindle books doing really well, causing more and more people to come back to my (now newly designed and kick ass) website. I could see them benefiting in some way by coming over, by buying a program (no details in my vision, but I know they’ll be there), a book, some coaching or signing up for the coaching call subscription program. I could see myself meeting some of my readers face to face, giving out happy shiny puppy hugs like candy. If I sit with this vision long enough, and I do, loads of really fun images come to mind. I stay there as long as I can, playing with the visions. For example, I had this idea to create short, animated movies featuring the bullshit fairy. I got about 45 minutes of giddy laughs just thinking up funny things I could make him say and do. I know I’ll make more videos in the future and that I’ll almost certainly bring more humor into them. Again, when I’m vibing high, I can play with the possibilities for ages and have a fantastic time.

The Payoff

The whole time I’m doing that, I’m adding energy to my vision, which is my focal point for aligning myself with what I want. In other words, the more energy I add to this vision, the easier it will be for me to find it and focus on it going forwards. And that’s really the point of this entire exercise.

This process of defining what I want to focus on and putting enough focus on it so that the energy of it grows large enough to suck me right in when I get anywhere near it, ensures that if any doubts come up in the coming months, I’ll have a strong, stable vibrational base to stand on. Let’s say that in my quest to publish a Kindle book, I hit a snag. I try to figure out how to fix it, and in doing so, I focus more on the problem than the solution and I get really frustrated. All I have to do is decide to think better feeling thoughts. If I wasn’t in the habit of doing that, I might have a hard time finding a positive spin on this subject. But, since I’ve taken the time to practice my awesome feeling vision enough to make it strong and stable, the second I decide to feel better, that vision comes into focus and off I go. Weeeeeee!

Do you now see the value of this year end process? I take some time out of my holidays, when I’m relaxed and it’s easy for me to get into a high vibration, and I use those good feelings as a platform from which I can easily create strong, stable, positive energy visions of what I want, which will make it easy for me to stay focused on my desires and not get swept away by silly resistance. Whereas I normally spend a few minutes focusing on each area of my life, I use this off time to spend hours doing so. I then become a super charged manifesting magnet.

Do you want to set yourself up as a supercharged manifesting magnet, too? Give my little process a try. Let me know how it feels (I consider this one of the funnest things I do all year and I look forward to it like a kid going to Disneyland). I can’t wait to read your comments. 🙂