Resolutions, Shmesolutions. You need a vision you can sink your heart and soul into

This year, don’t waste all of that bright bubbly new year’s energy on fixing your body or changing the way you balance your checkbook: use it to change your whole life.

Here’s how to craft a vision you won’t give up on – and won’t be able to resist.

1) Get quiet. Allow images to drift toward you, watch for flashes and glimmers of what could be. Let them come all day long. Let them bubble up through your dreams.

• I do this while sipping tea with cream.
• I like silence. You can add music if you like.
• You’ll want to keep your notebook close by.

2) Follow the energy. You know that little burst of excitement that flares when something new arrives? That’s guidance. Don’t let it get away.

3) Get curious. Keep asking: what is this? Scan it for detail; for contours and color, texture and temperature. What shining something has caught your inner eye?

4) Start taking notes. Even if it’s a bit fuzzy around the edges, write elaborate descriptions of the details that you can discern – invent the ones that you can’t quite make out.

• I am wearing black yoga capri pants, my feet are bare, I’m walking across a large sunny room – the floors are hardwood, the walls are white – except for one wall of French doors, which open onto a balcony overlooking the sea. Over my shoulders, there is draped, a sheer silk shawl, the color of the water glistening outside the windows.

5) What else? As you write, keep looking at the image and asking: What else? When this vision manifests, who will be with me? What rooms will I walk through? What will my day be like? What will I wear? What will I eat? What will I see when I look out the window?

• After working all morning in my writing cottage, I prepare for a meeting with my publisher. 

5) Make things up. As your vision forms, there will be things that you can’t quite make out. Make them up. For example, in my own vision, I don’t have any idea what the other rooms in that beachfront house are like. I can’t make out the location of the kitchen or the color of the bathroom tiles. That’s okay. Take out your mental paintbrush and play.

• • After working all morning in my writing cottage, I prepare for a meeting with my publisher. 
  • My maroon jade green convertible roadster is parked at the front door of the house – a stone Spanish Colonial with a circular brick-paved driveway. 
  • My husband works happily in his attic studio. As I drive away, I plan the dinner we’ll cook tonight. Fresh fish, which I’ll pick up at the market in town; a bottle of wine; a green salad; a wedge of sheep’s milk cheese. 

6) Feel into the vision. Use all of your senses. See it, hear it, smell it, taste it. Feel your vision surrounding and enfolding you. You are a part of the vision and it is a part of you.

• My hair is long and wavy, pulled back in a loose braid with a pearl-studded clip. The sun warms my back;  the air smells of ocean, eucalyptus and lemon.