“I’m a hippy that gets shit done,” says Leonie Dawson, CEO of Shining Biz & Life Academy and creator of the Create Your Shining Year series of workbooks, diaries, and other resources.

This Australian native has managed to turn what was once a simple idea into a million dollar  business where she is able to keep herself and her children top priority. For the past five years, she has developed her own system to help countless others achieve their personal and professional goals. Her 2016 Create Your Shining Year Workbook is a mere fraction of what she has to offer. She also has a selection of webinars and other online courses that have helped thousands find purpose and contentment in life and work.

Now, most of us have used planners and journals before. Some of us may have stumbled on a self-help workbook on Amazon and gave it a whirl. Furthermore, every one of us has made multiple New Year’s resolutions and broke every single one of them. Dawson’s Create Your Shining Year offers a fresh approach to goal-setting, planning, self-reflection, and self-actualizing.

“Dedicated to:

This is a workbook meant for you and only you – a Bible of sorts, for everything you’ve imagined doing but never made tangible. However, Dawson wants her “workbookers” to give back as much as they receive from their dreamiest year. Reflection and resolution in regard to charity, family, and friendships are integral parts of The Shining Year Workbook.

According to Dawson, celebrating and releasing the year before is a vital step to creating your ultimate new year. As with many aspects of life, the positives should be illustrated before the negatives, and this workbook persuades the workbooker to do just that. Dawson calls it the The Very Important 2015 Closing Ceremony. Here’s an example from my own shining year.

“Especially towards the end of 2015, all I can think about was how preoccupied I was. I went back to grad school for special ed. on top of working two teaching jobs. So I haven’t had all the time in the world for writing, my crafting, or studying my oracle cards so that I might offer readings.

“Without energy and healthy living, I am not going to accomplish any of my dreams. I need to learn to say “no” when I need to or want to. I need to shut down when it comes to work and school stuff and tap into my creativity to avoid burnout.”

OK, so I kind of did the opposite of what Dawson intends. I went from negative to positive. But the energy that emanates from the guidance and structure of the workbook reminds you there is no right or wrong way to visualize. If one of the objectives is to work towards self-acceptance and self-actualization, would it make sense to place boundaries on yourself?

Immediately, the art work stimulates positivity, made by a woman who has developed a fun, whimsical, thorough, and honest system for getting your life where it needs to be. Leonie Dawson has brought together a community of women who journal, collage, color, and doodle their way to a higher sense of self – a fantastic resource for finding what the Mind Key community wants you to find – passion and zest for life.