Gratitude : 2011

The happiest of new years to you friends! Time to peer through a reflective lens on the year past, yes?

Well, I can't reflect adequately this year just gone without remembering where it began. That's always a good lesson isn't it; to fully appreciate where you are, remember where you came from. 2011 began from a relatively dark place, an exhausted position, but one of survival.

Summing up the adventures and new life that followed in 2011—and these were huge—I wonder what it was about the year that characterised it differently. I think it's partly about the opportunities that are lined up ready to happen, but it is also about you, your attitude and openness to learn, and how you choose to grow through pains and traumas which have the potential to sculpt you. Your fit with the shapes of other lives and events may depend on how you responded to those other happenings in the first place.

So my friends and I gathered at the cusp of 2011 and 2012, and we pondered our questions and gratitudes for the journey through 2011. For me, an unexpected outcome of doing this was realising a significant ignition of courage had come out of that determination to be thankful for all the crap that had happened previously. Somehow, claiming that position lead me to a new perspective on the age-old question, 'what's the worst that could happen?' You know you have struggled, and won, and and this inspires a bold grip on new opportunity and a strong fight in your heart to persevere and see right.

August 2011, there I am in South America at the end of a five-week trip when I had originally applied for a ten-day hike in the Rockies. I have delivered training programmes to local photographers, which makes real sense of my newly-achieved-through-hard-graft teaching qualification, and after travelling all around Peru I'm in the poorest district in Lima giving these school girls a go on my camera. These are Peru's future documentary makers, and it's a buzz to give them a glimpse of how it might work for them. Then just three months later I'm standing in a packed gallery in London talking to supporters about African street children and our photographs of them, and beginning to have the kind of conversations that happen because somewhere back there I managed to say 'yes' in the face of challenge, and maybe there was a glint I my eye because I'd survived something awful.

Battled, and won.

I am grateful for courage, which has produced a strength to really live life thoroughly through all its adventures. And yes, love comes with that, with bells on.

I hope and pray in this courage and new life for everyone I love, with gratitude.

A very happy new year. x

{Today's Soundtrack: James Vincent McMorrow - Early in the Morning}

Get Your Gumboots On!

Right then, what we need now is a little objective setting. There are ways and ways to approach the turn of new year, making battle plans to obtain the life we wish we lived. But really, the only way to obtain it is to do it.

The last few years, early in January me and some pals have helped each other set 'objectives' rather than 'resolutions'. Time to get your business lingo bingo cards out, I'm talking SMART objectives folks! 

Making resolutions such as 'get slimmer and be more positive' is about a state of mind. You can't induce this anymore than you can induce growing a prize marrow just by thinking about it. These are not good goals to set, and you are likely to end up demoralised because you have not identified how you will get slimmer, or practically what will change to help you with that positive thinking.

Alternatively, setting objectives such as 'cycle to work twice a week, and practice 2 new healthy recipes a week because reducing the amount of crap I eat will have a positive effect on my mood' is about physical, tangible, achievable actions that will naturally lead you to realise those hopes you have to be slimmer and a nicer person to be around. 

To obtain that life you want, you have to do it. Roll up those sleeves and get your work boots on!

What are your top three objectives for a good, practical working start to the year?

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For more on this, pick up the wonderful Jane Northcote's 'Making Change Happen' for practical and no nonsense advice on identifying, setting and realising objectives. Jane is a business consultant, and commissioned me to illustrate her book with drawings, exercises and question/answer space to make it highly interactive. It is targeted at business people, but I think the advice has a universal appeal. I—an artist—loved it!

{Today's Soundtrack: a blast from the past, The Verve - Lucky Man}

Fire Up

Happy new year everyone! I hope your Christmas time was lush and you are solidly back in the groove – welcome back!

This new year I spent a lovely time with close friends as we wrapped up the year and let the promise inherent in Christmas fire us up for a fresh 2011 start. Curled up around the fire, feasting, chatting, we challenged each other to confront face on what was so hard in 2010, and really, some parts of it were dire. We walked through these experiences to a place of gratitude – gratitude for the fact we faced tough turns in our lives but lived to tell the tale, and are stronger for making it. Further, our faith is deeper that whatever happens God's hand is at work to see us through. So we said some prayers too, unconventionally for a night that supposedly wears the Biggest Party of the Year crown.

What seemed so new about this new year was a resolve that we will not take 'no' for an answer, even after all this. New year is our cultural moment to choose reignition and spark into new adventures, putting the past into positive light and holding torches up for the future. We talked—me and my friends—about what we will remember about making it, and how we will remember, and how these memories will inspire us to grasp all the things we dream of for 2011. 

It's not just the 'what', it's the 'how' too.

It becomes the new year tradition for many, to fill these lanterns with light and float them off into the air. We have gratitude for what has gone before and we have hope for what lies ahead.

Have a wonderful, adventure-filled 2011.

{Today's Soundtrack: Fanfarlo - Reservoir}

Searchlights

{Today's Soundtrack: Scott Matthews - Is This Love}

Spring

A wise person once made the observation that those who sow in tears will reap in joy.

It's been an interesting few months through the winter, following another wild year of change and adventure. Winter is the time when things are frozen with nothing going in and nothing coming out - nothing but hibernation and things taking place in secret. But now with a stirring feeling it's time to return to the soil and make my public appeal for Spring to do its work!

Looking out across an open - seemingly empty - space I can't help wondering what will emerge, and don't know where to start with sharing my thoughts on winter. Today let's breathe into the hope that the seeds are moving underground. Today's message is simple and there's not much to look at, but that's all I can give you. Honesty.

What will happen next? I just don't know, I really, really don't know...


{Today's soundtrack: Thomas Newman - Any Other Name}