[New Year, New You] Weekly Writing Prompt: Goals

You wish it was Avon calling.

The New Year, New You Project is an experiment in Magical Radical Transformation.  Please see here for how to participate! 


Please remember to leave a link here to your blog entry with your response to this prompt or an update on your own Experiment.


Many of you have already started to set goals for yourself which is awesome.  If you have not yet, this is the prompt for you to do so.


What do you want to accomplish in 2012 using both magical and mundane means?  

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't generally plan my activities around moon phases/days of the week but I know some of you are into that so I list my recs here for those of you who do.

God/dess/es: Athena, Bhramari Devi, Thoth, Var, Daikoku, Rat

Phase of the Moon: The Waning Crescent Moon right now.  Use this phase to focus on banishing your negative attachments

Days of the Week: Wednesday, Sunday

Inspirational Song for Your Brainmeat: What the Water Gave Me, Florence + the Machine (‘Cause she’s a crueler mistress/ And the bargain must be made/ But oh, my love, don’t forget me/ When I let the water take me)

Most of you have set the larger goals, but now is the time to do a few things:

1. How are you going to accomplish these large goals in your daily life?  You need to start breaking it up into bite sized pieces.  Our particular Experiment goes until Valentine's Day.  What can you reasonably expect to accomplish by then?  How will you do it?

Example: I want to be more physically fit.  What days will you go on the gym?  What's your Plan B if you can't get to the gym that day?  Do you want to be able to run for twenty minutes without feeling like you're dying?  Then how much time will you spend on the treadmill on Week 1 and how much on Week 2, etc?  Will you be modifying your diet/water consumption/alcohol consumption?  How?  What will you do when you go out with friends or go to parties?  What's your plan for when you get bored with the gym?  What about when you're snowed in or sick?  Really get into the meat of what you're trying to do.  You're going to fuck this up sometimes and that's okay.  But you need to start laying down real ground work because the more you you flesh this out, the more it becomes real.

An aside: While not the example given, many people want to write books.  I strongly suggest looking at my PEH, Gordon's eBook crash course and Penelope Trunk's advice today.

2.  What magical acts (rituals, spellwork, whatever it is you do) can you do to help you accomplish this goal?  If you are into Planetary magic, you may want to consider looking into the Gates work that RO does to help you accomplish your goals.  Thinking strategically in magic isn't something that comes naturally to a lot of us either.  Check out Jason's books on Strategic Sorcery if that's something you need some guidance on.

Continuing with our example of wanting to be more physically fit, you may want to consider taking yoga as part of your regime.  Not power yoga or sweating yoga or all the other ridiculous crap we add to make it more efficient.  Spiritual yoga led by a knowledgeable teacher.  Do ritual work to feel more present in your body.  Enchant to really make your body into a temple.  Put orange essential oil on to make you feel peppier and more able to do your work with a tiny spell rhyme attached to it.

3. Use your preferred method of divination to figure out both what you can do to make sure these goals will happen and also to figure out what road blocks keep you from this.

4. Consult whatever inner or outer spirits you may work with as to what's blocking you from achieving your goals.  If you're the meditative type, when meditating consult your spirits there.  If you aren't the meditative type, when you are just about to drift off to sleep when your mind is relaxed, ask what's preventing you from achieving these goals.  In terms of "who" you're asking, you can ask personal spirit guides or god/dess/es, your Younger Self, Talking Self, and Higher Self or even personifications of the traits you're either trying to emulate or discourage.  Whatever works for your personal cosmos.

That should be more than enough for you to try to figure out over the holidaze.  Get to work!