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Writer's pictureLisa Hammer

Are You Walking into your Next Chapter with Intention?


Are you walking into your next chapter with confidence and a clear direction? Or are you still living life on auto-pilot?


I don’t know about you, but often times when I stop to reflect, I am shocked at the fact that I am fifty-five years old. How about you?


It is crazy how time flies, particularly when you are going through life on auto-pilot, pushing through to the next thing on your schedule, never stopping to assess whether what you are doing is really what you want to be doing.


Although, the Pandemic was a scary time, it did provide us all with one gift, if we chose to unwrap it. That was the gift of slowing down. It provided each of us the time and space to sit quietly and pay attention to what really matters. For some it caused anxiety for others it provided clarity. How about you? What did you find?


For me, it provided clarity! It gave me the space to sit quietly and get clear about what is important to me and how I want my future to look. Up to that point, life happened to me, without specific purpose or intent. Which is somewhat embarrassing to say for someone in her mid-fifties.


How did I get clarity? By being forced to slow down, I was finally able to identify my core values and develop my morning routine. Getting clear about my core values, gave me the compass by which to make daily choices about what I will and what I will not do. It helped me become clear about what I want in my life and what I don’t want. Now every decision I make is filtered through my three core values; growth, self-love and mindfulness.


Now I am not perfect by any means, and oftentimes decisions are made on the fly and in hindsight did not support my core values and vision for my future. But rather than beating myself up, I reset, redirect and start again, because I now have a starting point. I just go back to my core values.


Recently, I volunteered as a Success partner for the EmployHer program. As a Success partner, you are paired with a participant who is seeking employment or other resources through the opportunity fair. As we came to the conclusion of the day, we had a strategy session and part of the session was about setting goals and identifying your core values, which I thought was awesome. At which time, I shared with my mentee my core values. She asked me how I figured out what they were. I told her it took me nearly fifty-five years to figure them out, but over the past three years I was finally able to narrow them down and land on three that really spoke to me. And that only happened because I gave myself permission to let go of what I believed to be "conventional values" and I adopted the words that spoke most purely to me. And I encouraged her to do the same.


So, at this point you may be asking how does this relate to the Next Chapter? Without clear intention about what matters most to you, “core values”, you cannot truly design the next half of your life, can you? Getting really clear about what is important to you requires you to slow down and become intentional. I know if I hadn’t gotten clear about my core values, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this post, I wouldn’t have my business and I wouldn’t be on this amazing health and wellness journey.


The question I have for you is, "will you slow down enough and become intentional about what is important to you and identify your core values"? If your answer is yes, but are not sure how to slow down and carve out the time you need, then I encourage you to grab my free “Morning Routine Checklist” to help you to get quiet, intentional and slow down enough to hear your inner voice telling you what matters most.


Have you already identified your core values? Great, then feel free to share them in the comments ↓


If there is someone in your life who would benefit from this article please share.


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(photo credit: The Goss Boss LLC, www.cristingoss.com, @glowwithgossboss)

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