Did you already get your vision board set up for 2021?
Or did you feel like it would just be some sad sadistic exercise since this last year was blown out of the water?
Listen you don’t have to try and figure it all out in one big go on January 1st. It’s ok to take time to figure out what you would like to see happen this year. And hey, you’ve learned some HUGE lessons about how to move forward in life when uncontrollable events ruin all the things for you.
I’m going to walk you through a Vision Board that will actually feel realistic and feasible. We’ll navigate goals and expectations that are greater than any single event can take away from you.
You know how I know?
Because it’s what my husband and I did in order to survive the year that our oldest was diagnosed with cancer in January of 2018. Our VERY planned vision board was literally thrown in the trash and we wanted to throw up our hands in the hair and curl up under our covers.
But we couldn’t.
We had to figure out how to survive, and not just that, but how to thrive for our children. So a few months in to treatment we had a big ol’ pow-wow and figured out the things we could influence and what we could have power over and that has became how we’ve created our vision boards since. At the time it looked like making sure we each ate well, exercised daily and had times of peace for ourselves. That sounds simple but it was really all we had the bandwidth for and that made it easy to prioritize those three things no matter what.
You’ve done something similar. You’ve been faced with an uncontrollable circumstance that you are forced to live with despite how it completely changes your life and your plans. You’ve gone through almost and entire year of having to pivot ALL THE TIME. And you did it. You're here today as a completely different version of yourself, one you never thought existed. You're capable of hard things and new things.
Even though all that hard work has been exhausting in every way, you have learned a new skill! You’ve become adaptable! So we’re going to take all the things you care about most, that can’t be affected and touched by a global pandemic, a terrible diagnosis, or even a job loss.
Here’s the outline:
A. WHAT DO YOU VALUE?
B. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
(Personal, spiritual, physical, emotional, professional)
C. WHAT ARE YOUR MEASURABLE GOALS:
(Financial, personal, travel, family, fitness, spiritual)
D. DISPLAY IT!
LET'S DIG IN!
What Do I Value?
What are things that you want to prioritize above all else? What you value will be where you feel the most at ease when you expend energy there. Defining this will help you set the goals you want to achieve. This is a good exercise to do at the end of a year and going into a new year but also when you’re about to take on a big project, or analyzing a big change in your life like a move or a new job.
For example: A clean home, time with my kids, self-care time, alone time, time with my husband, fresh air/ nature time, ministry and service opportunities, winding down and a relaxed evening.
What Do I Want?
Using the list of values you created above, break them out into the these five categories: Personal, Physical, Emotional, Spiritual, Professional. You can get as detailed as you like but you’ll really dig deep later on when we go through Goals. Placing the things you value in each category helps you keep that in mind as you move forward.
For now, just think about how the things you value relate to the things you want out of live in the five categories we’ve stated. Then round out those categories with what you’d like to see come of them this year based on the things you value.
For example:
PERSONAL: (I value a clean home, time with my family, and self-care. I’ll use these as subcategories.)
As a Wife: prioritize date nights, face to face time after kids are in bed, etc.
As a Mom: 10 min of reading with each kid, 1:1 date once a month with each kid
For Myself: wake up earlier for alone time, get self-care dates twice a month
For our family: to travel more!
Financial: get our savings fund 3-6mnts of expenses
PHYSICAL: (I value being outside, working out 5 times a week and the 80/20 rule of food.)
Exercise: build up muscle in my legs and tummy
Physique: Work on my post-baby tummy and eating habits to loose 10-15 pounds
Health: get in with an OB and meet with a naturopath for gut related issues
EMOTIONAL: (I value counseling, speaking or writing as I process hard things, being connected with friends at a deep level.)
Internal: creating a habit of journaling and writing especially as the girls grow and seasons change.
External: dedicating myself to two friendships intentionally to create my dirt people.
Marital: speaking out truth in love and receiving it in kind. Asking for the help I need for my own heart, sacrificing of myself to care for his heart needs.
SPIRITUAL: (I value early mornings to meditate and read Scripture, mentor ship, and serving others.)
Internal: I want to get into the Bible every day before the kids wake up
External: Participate in Bible study weekly/bi-weekly and have a retreat
Service: Find one way to serve someone in our neighborhood
PROFESSIONAL: (I value growing in knowledge, position and trust with my cohorts)
Growth: I want to add two people to my team -contract, brand growth across all mediums
Knowledge: Prioritize education on SEO and content management
Impact: Grow enough to donate proceeds to Peds Onc foundations.
Financial: Grow my business to 30% profit this year
That seems like a lot but giving yourself just 30 minutes to do this exercise will result in some clear pictures of what you’d like to get out of this year. And none of this really has to do with anyone else. This is all an exercise you are doing and because it’s based off of your personal values, no one can take that away from you!
It’s nice to say that these are the things you WANT out of life, but if you don’t dig in, make a plan and make it measurable, it’ll never happen.
What Are My Measurable Goals?
The next part is where you get to make all that stuff that you have worked through so far measurable. So if you want to get face to face time with each kid twice a month this year, this next part is where you MAKE THAT HAPPEN!
You’ll look at the same 5 categories but really break them down. For instance, lets say under your Professional category you said that you wanted to grow your profit margin by 30% this year. Here is where you will categorize that out!
FINANCIAL:
How will you accomplish your financial goals this year within the parameters of your values and wants. Get specific
Ex: growing a platform of blog/social media/website that generates $2,000 in monthly profits within three months of inception.
This will require: hiring a SM Specialist, SEO, Affiliate Marketing and Connecting with like-minded brands for cross promotion
Formula = 1 Blog a week, 3 socials a week, 2 emails a week, 1 giveaway a month.
The more specific you get with each of the categories you’ve listed by breaking them down into their own details, the better of a picture you will have on what you are capable of doing for the year.
You can always go deeper down the rabbit hole but for this exercise you want to get your general ideas. Then as you go through your year you can pick one of the things on your list and really dive into the nitty gritty of details on how you’re going to accomplish those things.
Finally, and most importantly, you need to DISPLAY IT!!!!!
Find a way to make this a visual for you to see daily! You can easily jump on Pinterest and find tons of inspiration for a vision board. They include pictures, images, words, quotes...anything you can imagine. My advice would be keep it simple, keep it to a color scheme and keep it focused. If you make it too cute you’re just looking at beautiful art. You need to put stuff in it that will actually remind you of what you’re working towards.
HINT: your vision board doesn’t have to be PHYSICAL! Seriously! There are programs like Goodnotes and ProCreate that you can use to make an online version.
When we were hyper focused on getting out of debt my husband created our own little website where we could visually see the debt column (red) go down and the amount paid off column (green) go up. We had a banner of Italy on the page because we promised ourselves a trip to Italy when we finally accomplished our goal.
We had been working at this for about 5 years but when we created this visual, put a detailed plan in place, and got to work at it, we paid off all our debt in 18 months! You can do this!
Listen. I get that some of this is going to be out of your hands, especially in the financial route if your job changes with the pandemic. But now more than ever working from home or being your own boss is possible. On the other hand, you can control if you get face time with your kids and your spouse. You can control if you work out and when. You can control how much you take care of your spiritual life. These are things that have nothing to do with the state of our world and have everything to do with the state of YOU!
Phew!
I hope this was helpful! Hit me up on our socials for any questions you have or any clarifying you want. I have LOADS of examples and would LOVE to share them with you!
PS. A quick note on Planners:
I have tried ALL. THE. PLANNERS. And I can tell you right now that I have an ABSOLUTE crush on my StartPlanner as a physical planner. They have everything you could ever want in a planner and it's all really measurable too. Loads of places for goals and vision board and making sure to carry all that through out the year.
This year, when we moved into doing homeschooling, I decided to look online for a good planner I could really mold into my own thing and that's when I found YoursTrulyPrintables on Etsy and her beautiful planners that are compatible with Goodnotes. I've found that I can really use this thing for every part of life and it's become a bit more versatile for our current stage of life.
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