Simply put, this year has had a handful of twists and unexpected turns. Whilst I do enjoy roller coasters (they tickle me and I laugh and laugh), I’d rather not experience anything similar in real life. However, as we all know, rarely do things go {read more}
In this post, we discuss prioritization and focus. Separately or together, these two tools can reduce stress, increase the feeling of accomplishment and improve personal success rates. It may be helpful to have a piece of paper or journal to write down your thoughts. {read more}
As we end January 2021, it seemed fitting to make a late 90’s “Friends” Reference…
But seriously, let’s check in! How are you doing? Many of us started the year off with so much hopeful anticipation, it is hard to believe we the first full month is almost behind us! The month has had it’s own ups and downs with the current situations in the world. We may address those one day, for now we will go back to thinking on an individual level – how did you do this month? Even if you didn’t write down goals, how are you feeling about your year?
Did you make progress in all of your focus areas? or decide to switch around any short term actions? What have you learned about your personal will-power, tenacity or inner motivations? Are there any items you took off your list completely? or any you realized are no longer something you truly wanted to work on?
After doing the mid-month check-in, I adjusted some of my goals and daily habits to better fit my schedule and the remainder of the month! Unplanned but positive activities came up and filled up time as well, so I wanted to be sure to make note of those. The important thing is to look back over the month. Recognize where any and all progress was made and make note of the things that made you smile!
If you are doing this check-in along with me, here are the steps I took to reflect:
Here are my original posts related to setting yearly goals and setting a purpose!
Starting off the month, I was not feeling overly strong in mindfulness and mid-month felt I needed a strong attitude adjustment. At that point, I shifted how I was approaching my morning quiet time, and gave myself more space between waking up and logging on for the day. This gave me just enough change to feel a difference and allow myself to approach my day versus letting the day carry me through.
Looking over the month, I did not workout or get outside as much as I really wanted, this had to due with weather, motivation and not feeling well for a short bit in there. I do however, buy a few things to do an at home workout and wrote up a workout I can follow with minimal equipment!
Another shift I made in this area was doing daily, shorter (15-30 minute) yoga practices instead of the hour long 2x per week. Purposefully doing a daily practice also helped with my first focus area of mindfulness!
Career & Hustle
To (most likely) no surprise to those that know me, I completed the Career and Hustle Focus Area and made time to mentor two people as they prep for their Year-End Reviews with their managers. (One of my favorite things is seeing others succeed and grow to their full potential.)
In addition, I wanted to put more focus on my hobbies to gain a strong work/life balance and enjoy life a bit more, it is easy for me to work ‘too’ much, which leads us to our last planned focus area…
On the sheet of paper above, you will see I wrote ‘complete, sorta’ next to the Hobbies Focus area… I didn’t take a class as planned and I didn’t do the new activity I had in mind, however I did work on my photography skills and also tried out a new kitchen gadget with a friend… hence the ‘SORTA’ part of the comment.
Next month I may expand my thoughts on this section, especially as it warms up more and more. There are a handful of things I enjoy doing but feel like chores right now that either require my intense focus or require more screen time (like sewing new pillow covers and taking a virtual class) – because they are not the most appealing I would rather wait until organic motivation comes over me to complete them!
This reflection brought me to think about what I did do – since I didn’t meet all of the goals I had outlined in my focus areas, I thought to myself, how did I spent that time instead and was it worthwhile? Thinking this through, I added a 5th section of ‘unplanned’ and happy I did them activities, which include:
In a way these add up to the other focus areas and certainly have been fun, made my life more enjoyable and are helping with overall productivity being that I spend so much time in my home-office.
How was January 2021 for you? Comment down below or send me a message! Can’t wait to hear!!
Thank you for so many sweet comments, texts and messages on the vision board and goal-setting posts. Happiness fills my heart to know that this site is becoming a source of inspiration! Now that we’ve explored the visual and verbal side to our goals, it {read more}
Over the years, goal setting has become the one habit that has brought the most deliberate success. One of these days we will dive a bit deeper into why goal setting did not originally come natural to me and how I have cultivated my mind {read more}
Today is the last day of 2020 and we now have the opportunity to look forward into 2021and all it has to offer! The start of a new year (and even a new month to be honest) has always made me a tiny bit eager. Over the years, especially in college I was one to just want to hurry up and get to the next ‘level’ (as though life was a video game). Slowly but surely this feeling calmed down. Although I doubt I will ever be the type that floats through life, I have been able to appreciate the journey. To become more deliberate in recognizing the process and enjoy the ‘now’ moment much more so than ever.
One of the tools I have used to rein in my restlessness and start living to create memories is: a vision board. Today, I’d like to share with you how I personally create a vision board, why it has been a useful addition to my planning and hopefully inspire you to create one too!
Let’s start with the reason behind why vision boards are useful. As a person who has always had a determined, goal-setting, fast paced attitude toward life, I found myself becoming burnt out. I was achieving consistent results no matter what I set my mind on. Including travel, fitness, nutrition, finance and career but (… you saw that coming right ;)). Once I accomplished my goal, I was not taking the time to look back and appreciate the steps or even acknowledge that it had been done. Instead, I would set a higher goal and try to achieve it even faster than the last. Somehow I kept going at this speed until one day I woke up and realized that with all of my accomplishments I barely ‘felt’ anything.
If you can relate to this – you know how real this strange phenomenon is.
Connection
As is my true nature, I immediately started set goals more related to connecting with myself and my community. I dove deep into spirituality from a new perspective and got to know myself. I stopped using external examples of achievements and success as a foundation and instead did some soul searching.
All of this led me to Vision Boards! At its most basic, a vision board is meant to be a reflection of YOUR own personal dreams for YOURSELF, not based off culture, family or external expectations. And let’s be honest – it can be so fun to sit down and gather pictures or make a digital board!
Okay… so now that you know my story and why I started doing yearly vision boards, I want to walk through the process I take to create one each year.
Write a bunch of words, ideas and phrases down in general on how you want the following year to ‘feel’. Include any thoughts around goals, travel, career aspirations – anything you really want to experience or accomplish!
Select ONE word out of all the thoughts that will be my theme for the year. Selecting just one word can be difficult, so looking up potential words in the dictionary and doing a general google search can help to make sure its the word for your year!
My theme for this year is “CREATE”.
Some other themes I considered were:
Once you have a theme, it is then time to start categorizing all of your other thoughts into focus areas. The vision board queen (Terri Savelle Foy) recommends up to 10 focus areas. This year I am trying something new and only doing 4 focus areas. In the past I’ve done more or haven’t categorized my thoughts and I found it to be more scattered than helpful.
My four focus areas this year are:
Using Pinterest is always helpful to find visuals related to your focus areas, goals and themes. Sometimes I start with this step because it really is so fun! I use Pinterest and my own pictures, while I’ve known some folks to use magazines, their favorite influencers or photoshopped images!
I found a picture from last year’s board creation (so fun!)
YAY this part is where you will either print, cut and glue OR copy, edit and paste depending if you are doing a physical or digital board. This year is the first that I am doing a digital one – partially so I can share it with you and also because I no longer have a printer :-p.
Arrange your board in a way that is pleasing to you!
Now that you have your board put together, it is time to display it in a location where you will see it often. This will keep your top goals, desires and dreams for the year at the front of your mind.
At the end of each month, I check-in with myself and make sure my board is still reflective of what I want, but also to see how far I am coming. This isn’t meant to put pressure on yourself, but to really determine if you are taking action that is leading you down the path you want to be able to experience. Depending on your season of life, your thoughts and goals may be in more flux than other times and it is important not to stick to something that you may have already grown out of.
For example, maybe you tried that new hobby and didn’t particularly like it… time to move on! Or, one personal example… I broke a bone one year which limited my physical ability and therefore I didn’t meet my fitness goal for that year.
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Hopefully, this was helpful! It would be great to hear if you decided to make a board this year!
Stay tuned for the follow-up post later in the month, and of course at the end of 2021! I cannot wait to look back with you all and see how far each one of us has come.
In 2023, I updated this post with: THE MOST IMPORTANT thing I’ve ever put on my vision board. Watch my below short to see what it was: