Celebrating is an important part of the notebook-meeting process!
Once you start your meetings, you will be on a journey that will change your life for the better. It is a journey without end…you just travel from one mountaintop moment to the next. You and I were not generally raised to believe we have endless mountaintop moments that are reachable. Our limited view is that we have one distant dream of greatness (winning the lottery?) and that only the really lucky ones get to live a dream life. Well, I have much good news to share with you.
The notebook-meeting process is very inclusive.
Everyone can be successful.
Celebrating each meeting and every success with your action plans are two very important parts of the journey. Let me explain a little more.
For every notebook meeting after the first one, you’ll start by looking back at the notes of the previous meeting, reading the action plans aloud, and checking off the items as completed! Yes, you will start with a celebration of your (or everyone’s) success and hard work! These moments are such an important part of the process. They help you see the possibilities. The celebrations help everyone see the power of working as a team to solve problems.
You get to decide what the celebration looks like, and the truth is it won’t have to be much. Nothing can match the feeling of realizing you developed your own action plan and worked through it to completion. Job well done! If your meetings involve other family members, know that the most powerful form of celebrating can be praising the hard work and strong character it took to be successful. (No prizes needed, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
The other way to celebrate your notebook-meeting journey involves a part of the process that makes it unique and oh-so-special, something that no other personal development strategy that I know of uses:
The notebook meetings are not just meetings.
No, never, never, never have just a meeting. Instead, have a notebook-meeting event! Make it special, and make it your own. When I was single my favorite place to have my notebook meetings was in a lounge chair on my screened-in porch, where all I saw was the beautiful limbs of the river birch in my backyard and all the lushness of the woods beyond. A family of deer would sometimes appear. I always had music playing softly and either a cup of coffee or a glass of wine to drink depending on the time of day. Perhaps you have a special quiet place of your own, or you might prefer to have a date with yourself and your notebook at your favorite coffee shop. You decide.
If your meetings involve other family members, you could plan a special Saturday morning breakfast or a Sunday afternoon picnic. Combine your meetings with pizza night for the kids. Take your notebook and camping chairs to a state park, and circle around. Put your notebook in your backpack, and go on a hike. Sit on the rocks near the river, and let the creativity flow.
I am having flashbacks as I write this because David and I did almost all of the above. Our meetings are special. We love this time together. When we meet, we are celebrating the joys of managing our lives and making plans for our futures. We want to make it a special event every time we meet. Planning an event such as those listed above establishes a very positive “anchor” to our notebook meetings. You can do this, too.
Take a moment to think of how you can do that for yourself or your family. Where do your special moments happen? If nothing comes to you right away, then maybe you will be creating these moments now. Choose a spot: a blanket on the living-room floor, a picnic table in the back yard or at the local park, or perhaps you have a favorite family restaurant that will be quiet enough for everyone to hear and talk. You decide.
