The lovely Leonie Dawson workbooks!

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Guys guys guys.

I had a super-hard 2014, and when I got here to 2015, i decided that I've had enough. So I went to find ways to help me get out of that track--the one where I'm angry and trapped and poor and sad all the time--and into a new one where I'm happier, healthier, more balanced, more alive, more myself. I found a handful of workbooks that I'm working through now, and I love these particular two so much I had to say something about them. 

I did the Biz Workbook last week, and it clarified a whole bunch of things about my nailpolish business that I hadn't even thought about, and has already helped me lay down a plan of action for the year. I'm going to run through it again for this blog to see if I can parry it into a business of some sort, and again for my self-publishing / writing career. And then I'm going to find a way to smoosh it all together into one unified Plan.

I started on the personal one last night. It's harder, looking at the more personal stuff that consitutes "life" rather than "work", but it already makes me feel calmer, stronger, braver, and more open, just reading through it and answering the questions, and it's amazing to feel that way when I haven't actually changed anything yet. 

If you're looking for clear, caring, honest guidance that happens to also be really uplifting and super-pretty, click on that picture up there (or the same link under it), and let's get started! Sometimes all it takes is someone outside yourself asking the right questions, and things get a whole lot more clear.

Here's what I did:

It comes with a calendar that's supposed to go on the wall, but I already have a wall calendar, so I printed it two-pages-per-sheet and folded it accordion-style, taping up the edges to it's a book. 

Then I put that calendar into my home-made makeshift Midori-style planner (I'm calling it my Jankidori because it's pretty janky, but it gets the job done!), and as I work through the workbook, I'm putting dates, notes, deadlines, days off, ritual days, whatever on that calendar.

The month-in-review pages are paper-clipped to the back, waiting. The reminder pages are in the front folder. The pretty poster-pages, I'm keeping out and hanging around my room. And the pages of the workbook itself, which I also printed two-per-sheet, I'm taping and stapling into a notebook as I work through them, section by section, so I can see everything and have an easier way to look through it all later, when I  need to re-evaluate, remind, check, remember, or anything else. She says at the beginning of each book that we should aim for a well-worn workbook, and I so am. And I'm loving the basic creativity of pasting and taping and stapling those pages into the notebook.

Have you ever used one of Leonie Dawson's notebooks? How do you use it? Do you use any other workbooks to get your ducks in a row each year? Share in the comments below!