Hey, everybody! Welcome to the last installment of my series on making next year the best year of your life. This one is my favorite part!

I’ll start out by telling you about my favorite comic strip when I was a kid: Peanuts. In one strip, Lucy is at the mailbox, telling Charlie Brown that she’s just sent in her order for 365 good days: “By ‘good,’ of course, I mean good for me.” She walks away, and then Charlie Brown says, “That’s great. She’s just pre-empted the whole year!”

So we’re going to be like Lucy, and put in an order for some great days.

 

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You’re going to need a calendar.

Pick out something you love! I think Barnes and Noble is the best place to shop for them.

Now in a previous installment, I suggested writing your “focus word” for the year in the empty calendar squares of every month. That way you won’t do what I did this year, and completely forget it!

Then for each month, write in special days…

The big holidays are already on there. And celebrating all the holidays is one of my resolutions! However, there’s not enough of them. I think you’re going to want more reasons to celebrate and treat yourself right, if only in small ways, throughout the year. Here are some examples!

 

Birthdays and anniversaries of the people you care about (including you)!

This is something a lot of people write on calendars, of course.

 

Events you want to attend!

These are the easiest to research for the first couple of months of the year. For example, I wrote down two movie premiere dates, the free Chinese New Year celebration at the art museum, and the free happy hour concert at the performing arts center. I probably wouldn’t have been able to grab the free tickets in time if I hadn’t been researching it.

 

Random obscure holidays!

Go here and find your favorites! (Make sure to click the right year on the calendar on the left.) For January alone, I’ve made a note of National Bubble Bath Day, Hot Sauce Day, Pie Day (Pie is Mr. Donovan’s name for me, so it has romantic significance), and Puzzle Day. Many of these are easy and fun to celebrate.

 

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Days with religious or spiritual significance.

 

Other days that you’re devoting to fun or rewarding experiences.

You might designate a night to re-watch one of your favorite movies. Or a weekend to go canoeing. Or a Saturday to make big pans of lasagna and take them to the homeless shelter. Or a date to take a vacation day and lie in bed all day reading. Or maybe you’ll make it a spa day, and try all those homemade skin and hair treatments you have on your Pinterest board.

It can be anything you want. But go ahead and plan them now?

 

Will you actually do all of these things?

Probably not! Some of them are going to hit on days when you’re sick, or your car is in the shop, or your child is driving you bananas, or you’re desperately trying to finish a research paper.

It’s okay to skip some of them! You’ll do some of them, too. And every time you flip the calendar to a new month, it will greet you with good times ahead.

The whole point is to remind you not to wait to live your life. I know I can’t wait until I’m not busy…that’ll be when I’m dead! I’m not going to wait until I’m in a good mood to do something out of the ordinary…doing something out of the ordinary will probably put me in a good mood.

We can make the most ordinary week special and memorable, and I hope most of your weeks are in the coming year.

Any comments? Please share them below! Thank you for reading!