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2015.  It was a year that posed so many questions for me.

How will I live without my mother? How do I honor her legacy?

What will I do for good health (I battled an unending, debilitating sinus infection for 10 straight months that has led me on a long overdue journey to better physical health)?

What will I do to stop useless cycles in my life?

When does sacrifice become too sacrificial?

What am I willing to do to live the way I intend?

What would it be like to not do X or to do Y?

How can I be true to each of my intentions today?

If there are indeed years that ask question and years that answer them, then my intention is for 2016 to be filled with answers, answers that I deliberately seek and enthusiastically embrace so that they may serve me and those around me well.

Creating a 2016 that provides answers starts with me doing the work of asking and answering some deep questions for myself.

While last week, we focused on looking back at 2015, this week, I want to encourage you to look forward in a New Year Personal Summit.  A New Year Personal Summit is about getting quiet enough to discern what you most desire, so that your intention for the year is articulated and you can build your focus and actions from that deep soul direction.

Ready to get started?  Here you go.

Identify your intention for 2016. 

Intention setting is about naming an internal resolve, a desire to move towards something that will serve who you are and how you wish to be as you move forward. It is claiming the desire to live your life in a certain way so that things happen on purpose rather than by accident. After setting an intention, you can claim your vision, and then it is after that vision has been formed that you can begin to move into action.

What feeling do you want to have most regularly in 2015?  What feeling does your life most need right now?

What would feeling like this add to your life?

How would your life change with this feeling?  What would your life look like if

you were living this feeling regularly?

What behaviors are needed to live this feeling?

Get as clear as possible about what feeling you want in your life and what intention you most need to focus on for that to become real.  Then, if the idea speaks to you, you can choose your word for the year- the one word that will be a grounding and inspiration guide to you as you move through the year and embrace your possibilities (I will be blogging about words for the year on Monday, January 11th if you want more perspective on that).

Figure out your yeses and your nos.  

Now, that you have a sense of your intention, it is time to captures your vision for the year and one way to get started with that is by getting clear about your yeses and nos.

How will your life be different at the end of 2016 if you are able to make your above intention more present in your life throughout the year?

What do you want or need your life to feel and look like to live that concept/feeling?

What do you need more of in your life to bring this concept and feeling into clarity?

What do you wish to be doing more often in your life?

What do you need less of in your life to realize this feeling?   What are the experiences, interactions, and responsibilities that strip you of what you need?

Let your yeses and nos from this exercise be a guide for your new year.  For more thoughts on saying yes and no, check out The Wholehearted Continuum.

Design your action plan.   

What are your biggest dreams for 2016 (think in terms of all areas of your life: professionally, relationships, sense of wellbeing, personal development, spirituality, etc)?

How do these dreams align with how you want to feel in life?  Do they take you closer to what you feel will bring you happiness and congruence in your life?

What growth opportunities do you need to explore?

What beliefs or behaviors might need revision to lead you closer to your dream?

How ready are you for this dream?  How do you know this?

What first step are you ready to take?

What do you need to begin (this could be resources, training, support, time, etc)?

What is the scope and reality of taking that step?

When can you begin and how?

What is your next step?

And, as a gentle and motivating reminder, what do you want to be manifested for yourself because of actions you have taken?

Some thoughts about action plans:  I have several areas where I would like to devote some intention and attention this year.  And I could try to do them all starting January 1st but then that is a whole lot of action all at once and is more likely to lead me to feeling overwhelmed.  So I like to look at my intentions and the actions they suggest and then prioritize when each should happen.

If an all-or-nothing approach to resolutions, goals, and/or intentions has been your downfall, loosen your grips on the absolutes. Instead, give yourself a range. Aim to make the choices you wish to make for 80 or 90 percent of the time, for example. Or aim to do one thing at a time (This week, go to bed at 10:30.  Next week, you can add the 60 ounces of water a day and the next week you can add the fifteen minutes of reading daily).  This way, you build grace into how you experience and create your life. Knowing you don’t have to be perfect (and you know how I feel about perfect) can often be the impetus you need to move you closer to the life you desire.  Your resolutions, intentions, dreams, desires do not have to look like anyone else’s.

Celebrate. The New Year isn’t a time to make yourself feel bad or to shame yourself.  It’s an opportunity to remember that all of life is journey and we can choose our journey any time.

Want even more support as you reflect on 2015 and plan for 2016?  Join me this Friday or Saturday for visionSPARK or re:NEW.  

With every new interaction, we arrive to each other not fully formed, broken even.

That is not saying anything about you; it is just a reflection on the nature of life.  Our entire life’s journey is about healing in some way, about finding wholeness, and we are always on that journey, always on a quest to make ourselves as whole as possible for this given moment.  And when we connect with one another, when we show up to each other authentic and vulnerable and willing, we receive one more gift, one more balm on our journey towards healing.

You all have been that balm.

To each other, yes; and to me, too.  Week by week, I know that you helped to heal me, and I have witnessed you healing one another.  I marveled at your magic and at our good fortune of having just exactly this combination of each of you at exactly this moment be together, to learn together, to try together, to heal together.

When we show up to each other, anywhere in life, I think these are the most essential questions that we should ask; whose answers we should most seek.

How can I help you?  How can I be a part of your healing?  What is it that I can learn from you?      

These questions are the very cornerstone of discovering what our purpose is in this world.

Life is huge and complex and overwhelming.  Sometimes, in our desire to make things easier, we take shortcuts.  One of our most common shortcuts is to put people in boxes.  Oh, you are Latina?  Well, that means this.  You are male?  That means this.  You are a woman and you date women?  That means this.  We do not create these boxes to be cruel.  We create these boxes to make things easier for ourselves.  And, yet, there is nothing easy or ordinary or basic about the human condition and when we subscribe people to boxes, we deny them all of their complexity, all of their richness and experience, all of their brokenness and even their healing.  We dictate to them who we need them to be to make it easier for us.  These shortcuts, designed for efficiency, almost always fail us because we aren’t meant for efficiency.  As a people, we are meant for expansiveness.

As I witnessed and learned from you each week, the most miraculous realization came to me because I saw in you this way made truth as you committed to hearing one another, witnessing one another, revealing yourselves to one another, understanding one another.  You refused to put each other in boxes; you assumed right intention; you gave grace, you listened.

And here is what I know from watching you:  your generation can be the one that changes everything—that destroys the crutch of the box, that takes each other out of that box and, by doing so, takes society out of its prison.  You can be the one that never assumes, that never limits, that never diminishes.  And each of you, as I have seen here every Friday, can be leaders in that effort.  Because I have witnessed your magic, your compassion, your hope, your hurt, your healing.  You can do better than we have done so far.  You can change us.  You can make the world safer and more welcoming for each of us—no matter our bodies, our beliefs, our brokenness.  You can heal the world as you heal yourself.  Witnessing you, watching your way, reading your words has given me the most profound hope.

We have talked for months about what matters: how it is not how we look but how we show up—our openness, our willingness, our hopefulness—that matters, that people remember, that changes lives.   I think creating the collective and individual future of our dreams comes down to this:

How young can we be when we realize all that matters is how much we love (ourselves and others), how much we cherish the time we have left (and how much we make choices that allow that time to be high quality), how much judgment hasn’t done us a lick of good as an individual, a community, or a society (in fact, it may be the thing that has done us the most collective profound harm), how much our offering help can change everything for someone else and our selves?

Today is the youngest you will be for the rest of your lives.  Can you realize today that nothing else matters but getting the soul part right?  Can you walk away from a prescriptive idea of what your body should look like and who you should be if you fall into any particular demographic and free yourselves, and everyone else, from the uselessness of judgment and smallness?  Can today be the day that you quit living by anyone else’s principles and begin living instead by what you know in your soul to be true—that you have worth just as you are and that this world needs you?

I have known it from the first day that I met you—the collective you, yes, but the individual you even more so—you are magic.   You have it in you to change not just your world but the world.  You were made for a time like this.

I believe in you. I appreciate you.  I am in awe of you.  And I cannot wait to see how you change this world.

♥

At the end of each semester, I write my students a letter that is unique to their class.  This was the letter for my body image class this semester.

Want to read some past letters?

The world is aching for you to show up. 

The world needs your lightness 

We hunger to be known.  

Answer the call into your own greatness 

Radiate Love 

Do the world’s work 

And here is the letter I share with them on the first day of school.  

I have been working on my plans for 2016 and am updating my Passion. Purpose. Plunge retreats so I wanted to share those details with you here.

But, first, you might be wondering what these retreats are…

Before booking a personal retreat with Rosie, I was noticing a growing feeling of powerlessness in my work life – especially around deciding what freelance gigs to pursue and accept. To borrow Howard Thurman’s phrase, it was as if I was “spending my days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.” What I wanted was to define for myself what kind of work was worthy of my time, energy, and calling and learn to make more trustworthy decisions. While I had been seeing a therapist to tackle my spiritual roadblocks, I needed a fresh approach to tackling my professional ones.

From our first conversation over the phone, Rosie began helping me get unstuck. She listened well. She asked great questions. She mirrored back what she was hearing. Everything about her approach was tailored exactly for me. Even the homework assignments before meeting for our in-person retreat were helpful in and of themselves to discern. Once we were together in person we quickly moved from talking into doing. The most helpful thing we did together was a commitment assessment, walking through every work project on my plate and talking about whether it was something I needed to complete, adapt, or get out of. About a particularly lackluster commitment I had already made, I said, “Although I’m not excited about it, it’s important for me to keep my word.” Rosie looked at me plainly and said, “So, you can keep your commitment to the client or keep your commitment to the values you’ve articulated here.” She gave me permission to act on what my gut had been telling me for a long time.

After the retreat, I felt my personal voice and agency returning in my work life. I updated my website to set clearer expectations for potential clients. I began saying yes and no with more confidence. I even got out of a few of my prior commitments with integrity, thanks to Rosie’s help in wording my change of course. When we had our follow-up phone call one month later, I was astonished to see that we had addressed every concern I brought to the table at the beginning.

Rosie is clearly doing what she was born to do and giving every one in her life the courage to do the same. I’m telling all my friends – pastors, nurses, artists, and anyone who will listen – that it was the best professional development dollars I’ve ever spent.

Erin Lane

What is a Passion. Purpose. Plunge Retreat?

An individualized, one-on-one retreat designed and facilitated by me with your greatest needs, wants, and dreams in mind.

Together, during a pre-retreat Vision Session, we’ll identify what it is you most need to live with passion, purpose, and deep self-acceptance so that you can create an incredibly satisfying life that allows you to authentically be yourself.  Then, I’ll personally design a retreat for you that allows you to creatively and thoughtfully move through your fears and challenges, provides you with the physical and emotional space to see what’s possible and get excited about it, and the create an action plan that allows you to step into the life you are meant to be living.

During the retreat, we spend three to six hours in thoughtful, deep, guided conversation that illuminates what you are after and how to get there and then we create a thoughtful action plan that will get you there.  Finally, about a month after your retreat, we reconnect in a post-retreat Shine session where we reflect on how things are going and tweak anything that needs adjusting.  Throughout this process, I am just an email away for any problem solving, processing, or celebrating.

Rosie brings the perfect balance of encouragement and practical wisdom to her retreats. When I was struggling with my professional future, I scheduled a Passion. Purpose. Plunge. retreat because I wanted a thought partner in thinking through my next steps. Rosie helped me tremendously in planning for my transition in a holistic way, and I walked away with a much clearer vision of what I wanted for my life and how I was going to achieve it. I have been singing her praises to friends and colleagues ever since.

Katey Zeh

 Is a Passion. Purpose. Plunge Retreat right for you?

Are you ready to move past your fear and inertia to really create the life you want?

Do you need space and support to really help you breathe, think, dream, and plan for your best life?

Do you want to feel invigorated, encouraged, inspired, focused, clear, committed, and authentic?

Does having someone in your corner raise your sense of accountability and possibility while bringing out your best?

Are you ready to realize what you have been hoping for?

…then a Passion. Purpose. Plunge retreat may just be the thing for you.

We’ll spend our time together really filtering out the excess noise and identifying and embracing what is most true for you in how to live authentically and create the life you want.  You will claim what you want your legacy to be and understand how to live in a way that aligns with who and how you most want to be.  We will examine your self-care and help you more deliberately embrace self-acceptance so that you are your best ally and not your biggest foe.  You will articulate your wants and needs and then create an action plan that claims your vision and allows you to create it at a pace that is right for you.  Ultimately, you will leave your retreat with a sense of confidence in what you uniquely offer the world, the ability to articulate it, and a vision for how to live on purpose.  You will feel invigorated, optimistic, and focused and have a clear action plan on how to move forward in an authentic, whole-hearted way.

If I could describe my PPP retreat experience in one word, it would be REJUVENATING. Rosie has a great mix of wonderful, whimsical enthusiasm and specific, organized planning. These came together to create a plan for my upcoming year that excites me and challenges me. It’s no longer a clump of vague ideas wrestling with each other, but a set plan that purposefully moves me forward and offers many opportunities for growth and new experiences. It was great to talk about my desires and hopes and have someone listen and forge them into something attainable, someone to remind me that a lot is in my hands – for one, how I face and treat each day. Having Rosie as a mentor is refreshing and life-giving. From the food provided to the exercises of discernment and planning we did, I felt taken care of and listened to. It was great to be able to step back from my assumptions of what society thinks I should do with my life and think about what I actually want to do. No matter where you are or what you’re looking for in life, Rosie will provide a safe space and affirming ways to go forward. You won’t regret a PPP retreat.

Claire Asbury

There are three options for a Passion. Purpose. Plunge retreat.

The Peace experience is a 90 minute one-on-one session done over Skype (this is a contained session and does not include the one hour pre-planning phone call) where  we’ll examine a smaller question or issue and apply some creative problem solving to it so that you come away with powerful solution for your situation and an action plan to guide you forward.  The Peace experience can work for a personal or professional question and is ideal for a small challenge— you are launching a new project and want to fine-tune or trouble shoot it, you are working on your self-care and want help writing a wellness prescription and putting it into practice, you want to work through a specific issue at work.

The Passion experience is a 5 hour one-on-one retreat experience that can be offered in person if you are local to Charlotte, NC or over Skype if you are not. The Passion retreat consists of a pre-retreat vision reflection exercise, a one hour pre-retreat phone/Skype session, a three hour one-on-one retreat done in-person or over Skype that includes creating an action plan to guide your post-retreat plans, a one hour post-retreat phone/Skype session, and email support during the period contracted.

The Purpose experience consists of an 8 hour experience: a pre-retreat vision reflection exercise, a one hour pre-retreat phone/Skype vision session, a six hour in-person retreat that includes creating an action plan to guide your post-retreat plans, a one hour post-retreat phone/Skype session, and email support during the period contracted.

Signing up for a Passion. Purpose. Plunge. retreat is one of the best decisions I’ve made all year. Rosie created a thorough and thoughtful program that helped me identify personal and professional goals and develop a comprehensive plan for achieving them. During the retreat, Rosie created opportunities that stretched my beliefs about what is possible, allowing me to dream big — and she provided the support to help me reach the goals we set together. I left the retreat feeling invigorated and inspired. Less than 48 hours after the Passion. Purpose. Plunge retreat, I’d introduced a new program and got immediate results. I’ll be signing up for another retreat very soon!

Jodi Helmer

Want to take the plunge in 2016?

To schedule a one-on-one experience, email me at rosiemolinary at gmail dot com.

If you are eager to create the life of your imagining, it would be my great honor to partner with you in realizing the possibilities.

 I did an in-person Passion. Purpose. Plunge retreat with Rosie because I’d attended several of her VisionSPARK events and the outcome was always more than a good feeling. Time spent with Rosie is warm and supportive, but it’s also PRODUCTIVE. I knew I would leave my retreat with a clear action plan, timeline, and clearly articulated goals, not to mention fresh motivation to accomplish them. Rosie quickly and precisely narrows down what someone needs to be successful in personal or professional endeavors and then draws a map for how to get there. A retreat with Rosie was an investment in my success and happiness with immediate and measurable results.

Michelle Icard

So, here we are.  If you are stateside, we are just days away from kicking off the most wonderful time of the year… the Thanksgiving to New Year’s time span that is filled to overflowing with togetherness, love, goodness, merriment, joy, happiness, and, well, if we are being real here, anxiety.  Because while, in theory, we all love to get together with those we love, there is also this little underbelly of worry that we can’t help but wonder about as we load the car with suitcases, brown-paper packages, and carefully prepared casseroles.  And the voice of that worry likes to ask these questions:

Is my cousin going to ask why I am still single?

Is my mom going to ask me if I’ve lost weight, gained it, thought about losing some, thought about gaining some, or some other weight iteration nightmare?

Is my aunt going to say, “you would be so pretty if…”

Basically, in short, is someone, under the auspices of loving me, going to make me feel utterly unlovable with his or her judgments?  And, more importantly, am I going to let them?  Am I going to walk away from that dinner, stuffed from food that couldn’t satisfy the hole that was opened with those words, and think, “I SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING!”  Am I going to feel betrayed not just by my loved ones but by me?

And, so, in the midst of all of your other preparations for the big day Thursday and all the other big days that are to come in the next five weeks, I want you to add one more thing to your list of preparations.  I want you to add planning to take care of you to that list.

Now, there are many ways that we can take care of ourselves and those are all important.  But, today, we are focusing on the one thing you must be able to do this holiday season to get through it with your soul safely intact if you have people in your life who like to “take care” of you by taking you apart.

You have to teach people how to treat you.  

And you do that by setting boundaries. So, sometime today, while the pumpkin bread is baking or the laundry is drying or you are wrapping presents or writing your grocery list, I want you to turn your attention to taking care of you.  I want you to think about what you might hear from your family members that might result in a wound for you if you aren’t vigilant.

“Isn’t it time to start dying those grays?”

“That baby is five years old; shouldn’t you be rid of the baby fat?”

“Do you dress this way to work?”

And then, first and foremost, I want you to remember that those comments are never about you.  If someone feels the need to comment to you about your looks, your station in life, anything, really, it is not about you.  Those comments are a mirror into that person’s life and the challenges he or she has with the issue being mentioned.  I promise.

But, next, I want you to take it a step further.  The person who has his or her own wound often looks for a way to pass that wound on.  Think about it.  A wound like that is so hard to carry around, it is so soul crushing.  And, sometimes, if we can give it away for a moment, if we can just take the edge off of our own misery for a moment, well that feels a little like relief.  It’s only later, with counseling or deliberate insight and personal growth, that we can realize that it wasn’t relief at all; it was a way to numb ourselves.  We numb in so many ways, don’t we?  With food.  With alcohol.  With substances.  By being snarky and bitchy and mean.  We numb because we think the worst thing possible would be to face ourselves, to be vulnerable, to be real- we think that realness, that admission of imperfection is as bad and painful as it gets.  But I promise you this.  No one who has a healthy relationship with herself has ever looked at another person who stands real in the midst of her vulnerability and said “that looks weak.”  Look carefully.  From where I am sitting, vulnerability, realness, truth?  They all look a lot like courage.  They are all breathtakingly beautiful.  Until we give up the myth that both perfect and imperfect exist, we’ll keep missing the real truth: there is no perfect, there is no imperfect, there is only glimmering, vulnerable, soul-refreshing realness and it’s polar opposite.  And the polar opposite is wounded and wounds others.

And those who wish to wound look for the most vulnerable target- a target they know who will not see their barb for what it is and a target who will quietly accept it- in their desperate desire to pass off their own pain for a moment.  For your empathy and sympathy and politeness (oh, she won’t make a scene!), you are being targeted.

But that doesn’t have to be your role anymore.

Spend some time thinking about what you hear and then come up with two comebacks.

#1  The comeback that would most satisfy you if you could just say whatever you wanted to say which might sound a little like this:

Your mom:  “Honey, don’t you think you would just be so much happier if you just lost 20 pounds?”

You:  “Mom, don’t you mean that you would be so much happier if I just lost 20 pounds?” or “I would actually be happier if you didn’t always think my body was up for grabs.”

#2  The comeback that you can legitimately stomach giving– one that will set a boundary, one that will teach the person how to treat you, but one that will not send you to the bathroom for the duration of the get-together because you are so nauseous over delivering it.

Your mom:  “Honey, don’t you think you would just be so much happier if you lost 20 pounds?”

You:  “I actually don’t think you have to lose weight in order to be happy” or “This isn’t a productive conversation for us to have.”

Sometimes, comeback #1 and comeback #2 are the same but what I have found is that if you are a person who has spent your life receiving these barbs, it is very hard to go from receiving them and not saying a word to really strongly zinging the person the next time he or she says something.  Moreover, a big zinger isn’t the key difference maker.  Just identifying the boundary for the person you are interacting with and letting he or she know it has been crossed and you won’t be quiet anymore usually goes a very long way.  Very rarely does it take more than just a handful of times of setting that boundary before the person leaves you alone and either chooses to deal with his or her own stuff or moves on to, unfortunately, another victim.

Boundary setting is hard, hard work.  But it is important work.  Not just because it teaches other people how to treat us, but because it also shows us that we can take care of ourselves.  And when we begin to understand that, everything changes.  Maybe that can be this year’s holiday miracle.

Take care of you.  Promise?