Mid Year Reflection in Palm Springs
It is officially half way through the year and a great time to pause and reflect on your goals and accomplishments, and take a look at where you want to end the year. My business bestie and I decided that this called for a business retreat to celebrate so we packed our bags full of sunscreen and snacks and headed to Palm Springs.
For this retreat we thought it was important to take time to celebrate our wins and accomplishments, reflect on our goals, and look positively to the future. This meant a lot of celebrating with fancy cocktails, reflecting while soaking in the pool, and crafty activities.
As a lucky coincidence there was a pattern themed show in town at the Palm Springs Museum Architecture and Design Center. The exhibit was called Pattern Play: The Contemporary Designs of Jacqueline Groag. I loved seeing her pattern and I’m hoping to pick up a book of her work to learn more. She has an amazing graphic style and great use of color, I highly recommend checking her out!
REFLECTING AND GOAL SETTING
As for our reflections, I created a document to help guide our conversation and review our goals. I broke down our review to cover what our goals were for quarter 2, how we did on each goal, and then some wins to celebrate such as financial successes, creative successes, personal successes, and areas we would like to grow in. I will probably update this with some more focused questions. We then took some time to look at our goals for quarter 3. I am a little goal obsessed so I definitely went on to break down my quarter 3 goals into monthly goals which will then be used to create my monthly to-do list of action steps. If you want some resources to go through this process check out my planners in my previous blog, Planning Systems to Crush Your Goals.
In addition to our goal setting we also did a creative activity focused on reflection. My business bestie Danielle Yruegas from Sip of Copy fcopy.com/planned an awesome activity and solidified the fact that all of our retreats should include something crafty. The activity was to decorate hand mirrors that she brought for us and you know . . . reflect ha ha! It was a very open ended activity but the purpose was to decorate our mirrors with things that we needed to reflect on, be reminded of, or simply some positive messages to encourage us in the future. Luckily, I brought a great magazine called Mantra Wellness. It is full of amazing messages and graphics and makes for great collage/vision board materials. I picked this particular issue up at Sprouts. For my mirror, I decided to decorate it with a few positive affirmations on the front for when I need to work on positive self talk. The back I decorated with fun graphics, stickers, traits I want to embody, and additional positive messages and reminders. Here is how my mirror turned out . . .
PALM SPRINGS AND PATTERN
Just a few notes about Palm Springs if you haven’t been . . . it is an amazing city full of amazing mid-century modern inspiration and has just a fun positive energy to it. Also, a heads up . . . it gets really hot in the summer! When we were in town there was a high temperature of 108 degrees! Yikes! We spent a lot of time jumping from air conditioned stores to cafes and of course time floating in the pool. Here are some of my favorite places and things we experienced this trip in case you are interested in vacationing there . . .
Favorite shops:
Bobo Palm Springs - Im a sucker for stationery shops and this one is one of my favorites with many travel inspired stationery and a great travel journal which I just started using and love! See the picture below to see my entry for this trip.
Just Fabulous - This was just a fun shop nicely curated with gifts, books, cards, etc.
The Shag Store - we didn’t go in this time but I have been in here and purchased a nice book full of artwork as I love Shag!
Crystal Fantasy - If you are into the woo woo I recommend this shop, we wandered in to cool off and they had people giving readings. We quickly signed up and got a dose of inspiration and insight to kick off our retreat.
Favorite eats:
Boozehounds - I love this place, it has a fun vibe and is dog friendly! Also, tasty cocktails and food.
The Pink Cabana - I always stop by this place, they have great food and the environment is fun with amazing design and decor with a retro vibe.
Juniper Table - We wandered into this place which is attached to a hotel. It was a great little spot to get pizza and beer and people watch.
Some of my pattern highlights, spotted around town . . .
