2012 challenges

So, I've had this thought about story for a while now and I haven't really taken it anywhere.

I recently took the Strengths Finder 2.0 assessment for work and came out as:
Learner - Kinda' obvious. A love of learning. On a whole string of topics.
Ideation - Again, straightforward. Coming up with new ideas.
Individualization - Focused on understanding what makes each person tick in their own way - realizing that people are different and that solutions need to vary to accommodate (one diet does not fit all, e.g)
Maximizer - Highlighting the strengths in myself and the people around me, rather than getting stuck on what needs improvement. Playing those strengths together to get the best results.
Input - Collecting data from all sorts of sources. Hence my tons of open tabs, bookmarks, to read piles, and whatnot. I'm an information horder. Deal with it.

Taking the first and last of this list, you start to get a bit of a picture of my dilemma around story. I have been absorbing, gathering, bookmarking, reading. Trying to get all the angles I can and in the meantime not doing much movement at all on my own.




This is part of the reasoning behind the theme of Initiative in 2012. One of my big challenges for myself this year is to move from gathering info into action. I'm pretty excited about it actually. It's like when you talk and talk and talk about a project or trip and then it finally starts falling into place. I'm doing a little bit of the jump-up-and-down-and-giggle-and-clap-hands - on the inside, anyway.

The plan is to share challenges more often here, too, throughout the process.

What are your challenges as you set out on your 2012 adventure?

Passages - from one year to the next

2011 revisited
The year started with a lot of promise. New job and new outlook were going to change things up a lot. I don't think it got quite there. I got tangled a few times, lost in labyrinths of work and stress and questioning myself. Other stessors arose like monsters from the bogs, intent on tripping me up, dragging me down, and getting me lost forever in dark, dank, and smelly places.

How did I do on my three words? Not horrible, but there's definitely opportunity for improvement.

- Creativity- Apparently I was going to work on monthly themes. While I did more this past year than I have prior (including 30Days of Creativity on Pinterest, several cool projects, learning new things online and off), I did get stuck on some (Mom's tray took tooooo long) and creativity fell to the wayside when work got nuts.

- Confidence - Again, a strong start, but a weak finish. We'll leave it at that for now.

- Energy - While changes didn't impact stress levels as much as I thought they would, I think energy has improved. Especially since I've been playing SuperBetter and working on the Core workout.

Looking forward to 2012
2011 was rough. Besides the other stressors, it was a year marked by loss. There were some very great moments - Sonny & Pam's wedding and the trip to Paris were standouts. Sometimes those get lost in the shuffle, so it's good to call them out here.

So, what am I thinking for next year?

Following @fitarella's lead, I MAY come up with monthly challenges, but I'm wary about swearing that now - going to think on it over the weekend. I want to keep my 3 words top-of-mind and active, but don't want to feel like all I'm doing is making my list longer when I was time stressed already, so I have to figure that out.
I did like Chris Brogan's idea of a 3 item list each day with one item per theme.
By the turn of the year, I hope to have a better plan of attack.

Here are the 3 words that I've set as themes for Aprille for 2012:

- Initiative - I have sooooo many ideas in my head, on paper, fluttering around in various places. I need to organize and act. Hopefully you will see a big impact from that on this blog, in particular.

- Conversations - I went from a job where part of the definition was to constantly watch the social space for trends and ideas, where I prided myself on being the shy chic who was able to emerge from her corner in the online space and chat with cool people all over. From there to a job where I have yet to fully integrate trend watching into my time and conversation opportunities are minimal to none. This drastic difference in time spent in the social space has really limited my conversations. I've also been horrible about email (that's not necessarily new). 2012 will reverse the trend. I'll make time for convos. They're important to the story.

- Discipline - I need to stick to everything more. Workouts, chores, themes, projects, etc. A big part of this will be planning and focusing on keeping this stuff going. Using tactics I'm learning in SuperBetter to motivate myself properly to not get distracted. Distract-i-girl should not keep me from accomplishing what I hope to in 2012.

I think these three themes are what I need in order to do what I want with exploring, discovering, creating, story, and all the rest. They should keep the year interesting!

What are you thinking for 2012? Do you have 3 themes?