'There’s a real power in owning what you want'
How to design a life you love in 2023 and beyond, with Selina Barker
Hello and a happy Monday to you,
This Uplift comes to you a little later than planned as after a few weeks of feeling really energised and motivated, I’ve been feeling a bit more wobbly and run down. I’ve noticed a lot of people feeling burnt out or getting ill so I am sending lots of love to anyone in need of it and a gentle reminder to prioritise rest. As soon as I got a sniff of having less energy, I decided to streamline my very full diary and that included pressing pause on The Uplift for one week and one day.
This week I want to tell you about the New Year’s ritual that has been helping me reflect on each year and shape the next one since around 2016. It’s helped me really focus on what I want from the year and looking back I can see it’s had a huge impact on the things I have achieved or moved towards. The Goodbye Hello journal was created by career change coach Selina Barker and came into fruition through Selina and Vicki Pavitt’s Project Love. It offers a series of questions that help people design a life they love and set an intention for the next year, with quarterly check-ins. Selina, who offers career change coaching, runs a coaching community called Club You and has authored a book on burnout, kindly agreed to speak to me.
“There’s a real power in owning and being honest about what you want,” Selina, who first designed the guided journal in a Word document in 2010, tells me. “Writing it down is the first very powerful step towards committing to it.
“You’re committing it from pen to paper in a book that is asking you to write down your dreams and to dare to dream big. I’m always banging on about how the magic we have as human beings is our unique ability of being able to dream things up and then make those dreams a reality.”
Goodbye 2022 Hello 2023 includes questions to reflect on 2022 with a focus on gratitude and asks “What are the things you love to do?” with a real emphasis on who and what makes you feel good. It then invites a focus word for 2023 and guides users towards achievable goals. Selina is keen for people to feel able to dream big in 2023 after a particularly rough couple of years.
“We’re often told ‘Stop being a dreamer,’ ‘It’s time to grow up,’ ‘Time to get realistic,’ she says. “Dreaming is something we allow ourselves to do as children, maybe we allow ourselves in our 20s and 30s. Then we’re told it’s time to think about ‘the serious things’, perhaps owning your own home, having a certain kind of career, or having children, being in a relationship, might have once been a dream. I think sometimes we get to a point where we have got some or all of the things we thought we wanted to achieve in life and then we just stop dreaming, that’s it, we just live and we just exist. I think what the journal does is it brings to the forefront the fact that we are here to dream and there is a sense of fulfilment and an engagement with life when you do that.”
The journal has evolved from Word doc to PDF to a global Kickstarter campaign then got a publishing deal before Selina decided to return to self-publishing via Project You this year.
I asked Selina who the Goodbye Hello journal is for. “Of course it’s for people who love journaling,” she says. “It’s for people who love personal development and love to read self-help books and who believe in the idea of us creating and designing lives that we love.
“But it is actually also for people who aren’t into that. I always say that this journal in particular, I always use my brother as an example, he is not into self-help, he loves this journal. It’s the only time that he does what you would call ‘personal development work’ but he finds it a really valuable tool, he takes stock and to set a focus for the year ahead and to set some goals so that he is really focused on things that are important.
“Yes, part of it does talk about daring to dream but even then it’s very deliberately isn’t woo woo, I don’t even use the word manifest. It’s very much here and now, practical, down-to-earth so it’s definitely for the friend or partner or family member that you want to see them get more out of life.”
Selina suggests filling out the journal as a New Year ritual, whether taking some time between Christmas and New Year, or hibernating during this time and filling out the second part of the journal in February.
“It’s a really lovely gift for yourself and I’d suggest making a special occasion of it; take yourself to your favourite cafe, do it and then share some of your answers with a loved one, go and do some yoga first to get yourself in a reflective mood. It’s important to settle yourself, if you’re sort of rushing around trying to think of 101 things you’ve got to do before Christmas and you’re trying to do it then, it will be very hard to dream when you’ve got all these other things on your mind. It’s about creating some space for yourself.”
The journal is available to buy online via Project You or Oliver Bonas. You can find out more about Selina Barker via Project You. Selina was previously a guest on my podcast Life, Oh Life.
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Wishing you all a nourishing, joyful and restful week,
BB x