If new year has you itching to get down some thoughts and hopes for the year ahead, creating your own mini manifesto could be a great exercise.
I find myself full of seasonal hibernation feelings at the moment, and rather like folding myself into warm corners at home in between the work hours. I may not be quite full manifesto mode, but still find it helps to note down the odd words that float uppermost during a quiet time of sleeping and occasional reflection.
During my ‘Words To Live By’ workshops at Fforest Gather over the last few years, it’s been lovely leading groups of people in creating their own mini manifestos. First, we cover a few hand-lettering skills before settling into a guided meditation to help identify words to call on when needing strength, encouragement, support and so on. There is then plenty of time and space to create personal manifestos.
I have found this practice to be so enormously helpful – life changing, in fact. As I shared in my TEDx talk, I don’t really think there’s any substitute for writing things out by hand, if you want a message to sink in and embed itself and actually make a difference to the way you move through life. It helps you access a better quality of thinking, and is hard to predict where that can take you especially if you then hold that thing up to be looked at again and again.
This first month of the year, perhaps as a prelude to committing deeper thought and decision to a fuller manifesto further down the line, it may be enough to simply seek out some quiet space, switch off the noise for half an hour, and scribe a few words by the light of a small candle.
What do I hope this year will be? Spectacular or steady?
What do I long to see during the longest days? Nature, friends, landmarks?
How do I want to move through my days – with grace, ease or vigour?
Which earth element resonates, and how does its character inspire me?
What is my heart saying?
And with that, I’m off to find my little candle…
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My friend Sharon Tanton and I are making a ‘Create Your Own Manifesto’ course, launching online later this year. If you would like to stay in touch about this, do sign up to my ‘Journal’ newsletter and I shall keep you in the loop. It goes out once a month with loads of lovely visual inspiration for big thinkers, so if you’re thinking that making a manifesto is for you, this will give you some brilliant food for thought until then.