My youngest sister can barely sneeze without making a plan beforehand and I love to tease her about it. Me, I’m not much of a planner, but when it comes to a brand spanking new year, I’ve got into the habit of spending a whole day mapping out how I’d like things to unfold.

It was my spiritual mentor Marion Young who introduced me to this concept. Every year, at the beginning of January, she runs a Vision Day and asks us to put time aside, go within and think about what we really want for the next 12 months.

My default setting is to gallop out of the traps, blinkered, in a mad panic, terrified to slow down and take a breath in case all the spinning plates crash at my feet. This takes me down endless cul de sacs, into soul crushing jobs and leaves me feeling that I have no control over my life.

During the course of this spiritual work, which I’ve been doing since 2019, I’ve learned that I am in fact the mistress of my own destiny and all the books and self-help types who go on about manifesting your desires and thinking your dream life into existence, are onto something.

I haven’t cracked it 100%, but things have improved enormously. I’ve learned that:

• What you think about a lot comes to pass and when I made a decision to stop lying awake at night, worrying about destitution, my bank balance started to look a lot healther.

• When you start to wonder if you really do create your own destiny, take a look at some of your friends and notice how their frame of mind is reflected in their lives. People I know who are forever posting about how awful things are on social media, tend to experience even more awful things. I’ve been there, done it and got the T-shirt, so I know how hard it can be to break this cycle.

• Asking the universe/God/source/higher power or whatever you want to call it, for what you desire, works. That lottery win may not have manifested, but at the start of 2021 I asked for more writing work and along it came. As a result, my work life happiness rating is on the up. Yay!

• It’s really important to work out what it is you most desire – this may sound obvious, but for a long time, I believed that oodles of money would make me happy. I even made a pledge to make £1 million and the harder I tried, the less money I made. I realised that deep down, I didn’t want to run a thriving PR company. I didn’t want to go to endless meetings or spend hours networking. My vision boards were awash with pictures of forests, the sea, calm interiors….what I actually wanted to do most, was slow down.

• When I feel angry or annoyed with other people, it is because I am not looking after myself, listening to my inner voice or meeting my own needs. The more rested and fulfilled I am, the more love I have to give. I always leave silent retreats with a huge heart, bucket loads of tolerance and a generous disposition.

• I am one lucky b****. I have so much to be thankful for. Everything I want, I have already. Life is wonderful and the universe has got my back. Thank-you universe. We make quite a team, don’t we?

Vision Day 2022

Today, I bought a big piece of card, a heap of magazines filled with tranquil coastal scenes etc and the biggest Pritt stick I have ever seen. I am taking next Saturday’s Vision Day 2022 seriously. On the Friday, I will give my office a spring clean, so that I can get to work with a clear head the next day.

It’s not my thinking mind that will be creating my 2022 plan, it’s my unconcious mind, my soul, the part of me that has wisdom to impart, if only I would stop and listen. It knows what I need and where I should be heading.

I have an idea of what might appear on my vision board, but there will be surprises – there always are. It’s a whole day of silence, day dreaming, journalling, cutting and sticking. I’m sad we aren’t doing it in person like we used to pre-Covid, but as Marion would say, we are all connected energetically anyway.

I’m lucky. 2021 was awesome and I just know that 2022 will be too. Bring it on!