Great Decisions, Perfect Timing, my new book, launches on February 19, and the date is more than just a meaningless coincidence. February 19 is the 2015 Chinese New Year, the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar. Dating back to the 14th Century B.C.E. (many centuries before the western calendar was made up), the Chinese calendar is a lunar-solar calendar. Its New Year marks the beginning of the annual lunar cycle. This year February 18-19 is also a new moon – adding another auspicious dimension to this date for my book’s launch, because the phase of the new moon is reckoned to be the best time to start a new cycle.
It seemed a particularly fitting date to launch a book that will be a big part of my legacy and which deals with a cosmic sense of timing. And this is a book that—like my career—builds on and celebrates the legacy that the ancient Chinese sages left us—Taoism and the I Ching—an understanding of which has shaped my life.
In western society, however, the New Year celebration is not just a recognition of a new annual cycle and new beginnings, it’s also about making resolutions … the effort to proactively induce beneficial changes in one’s personal or professional life.
Unfortunately, typical New Year’s resolutions do not stick. Great Decisions, Perfect Timing discusses how my Visionary Decision Making process changes that by helping a person identify values, become more aware of cosmic timing signals and realize more intuitive insights by learning to facilitate them. VDM is a way to make and keep big changes that will not only outlast this year, but persist for many years to come—for as long as they support you.
You may remember that our last blog, the book’s inaugural blog post, discussed the idea of people in the last stage of life proactively creating legacies for descendants and future generations. Well, Chinese New Year has traditionally been the time to honor household and heavenly deities, including one’s ancestors. Perhaps this is the year that you add a bit to your own eventual legacy—by starting your memoir or creating a scrapbook of your parents and grandparents’ pictures.
This year, make some visionary resolutions that will enhance your life and support you on a more fulfilling path as you boldly execute them when the timing feels right. You can find out more about how the Visionary Decision Making process can help you do all this on Great Decisions, Perfect Timing’s Amazon page and on the book’s website.
P.S. On a side note, I have an upcoming trip to Beijing, China in October 2015 to speak at a conference of entrepreneurs and business leaders. I will be speaking about the book and visionary decision-making techniques—including the use of the I Ching, which most modern Chinese know nothing about. It’s ironic how a modern Visionary I Ching from America (my last book) can be an import from the West … and I’m so happy to be of service in this way (I hope they like it :-)!
