It’s that time of year when we’re all steadfast on the new goals and plans for making 2023 your best year yet. If you’re like most Americans, we over indulge on the holidays and find ourselves waking up on January 1st with a slight headache and a tug to pull it together. That usually manifests in a few different ways of setting a goal. Hot topics range from weight loss, to careers, to finding love, or leaving it. The next step after setting the goals is creating a consistent routine of seeing and reminding yourself of those goals daily. If you want to stick to the goals and really make a change this year, I urge you to consider following these seven categories in setting the goals and creating a vision board that hangs where you see it every day.
The work that goes into a vision board is more than pretty pictures. I want you to take time to write down the version of you that you want to be. What time do you wake up? What do you do in the mornings? What time do you go to work? What car do you drive to drop the kids at school? What schedule do you keep? What time do you get home? Do you cook dinner? Do you work out? Do you take vacations? Where and how many? Who is in those dreams with you? You first have to identify not what you will achieve in this coming year, but who will you be? Let’s build a vision for your ideal life!
#1 Faith
The first pillar of the vision board and goal setting is to start with your faith. I firmly believe this is foundational to your life. This first step must be laid or the rest will suffer. For me, this lies in prayer, in a spiritual journey with God, and attending church. It revolves around journaling and meditation while also studying books and a deeper connection with my relationship with my Creator. This is MY personal foundation of faith. What is yours? Even if you don’t believe in sharing the same faith, this needs to be a spiritual practice of some sort for you. It can be meditation, reading, or podcasts. This is a piece that centers your vision board and will reflect in some way the goals of your faith.
#2 Family
The family unit is my most important people. For my vision board practice, we sit as a family and discuss, what do we want to do as a family this year? Is it family board games once a week? I personally despise this one but my son always hopes it will make it on the list ☹. The fun ones we all agree on is where do we want to go? Do we want to be outside in nature more? Less technology? What about your family do you want to enhance? For instance, I have never been the cook of our family but I do have a goal to cook for my family once a week. I envision my parents and others sitting down together every Sunday for a meal and time together. So, for me, a picture of my dining room table with a meal and those I see at that table is a picture I’d like on my board.
#3 Fitness
Your health must be a priority. If you are not taking care of yourself, then how do expect to take care of anyone else? The misconception here is an ideal body – and I admit that I have frequently put a picture of an unattainable beach body on my board. That’s not what this is about. Fitness for me has become about trying new things. Is it a race you want to run? A mountain you want to climb? A class you want to attend? A gym you want to visit 3x a week? Maybe fitness for you needs to have a picture of a gallon of water and you need the reminder to add that to your plan. This is a pillar to your success in all areas so do not skip the fitness part because you think of a “diet”. This category serves as wellness in entirety so make time to focus on your health.
#4 Field
Your field is your career. This is paramount in many ways. Not only because it usually provides the financial support, but you spend at least eight hours a day, or more, with your workplace and your career. This is a significant part of your life and I hope you work to find a career that you can love. You usually have to try a few things, have a few bad gigs, before you start to carve the path to career or calling of your dreams. Spend some time here working on what this looks like. If you’re a professional, this might be a picture of an office space you dream of, a stage you speak on, or a number of sales you want to hit. If you are a stay-at-home parent this could be about the impact you are making with the kids, meals provided, lessons taught, time together, or crafts made. Don’t judge it big or small. This is your vision.
#5 Friends
As we get older, we outgrow a lot of friends, and that’s ok. I struggled with this, as I used to think it was difficult to make friends as an adult. You first have to love yourself (see #3), to learn to love other people and let them in. Friends need to cheer you on, encourage your dreams, and create a space for you to be yourself. Who does that for you? Put their picture on the board. If you find you don’t have anyone or you’d like a new circle, then you need to begin to investigate groups and places that would engage those types of people you want to attract in your life. The vision board is key to reminding yourself that those relationships are important. It’s easy to push friendships to the back as we get caught up in family and career but these need to be made a priority for a well-balanced and successful life.
#6 Fun
Ah, fun. What is this exactly? For years, and even still, this category haunts me. I know how to work, I know how to hang with family, I even figured out fitness. But I struggle with hobbies or “fun”. For some this is knitting, or reading, or golfing. Kudos! This is your easy space. But for those of us that are struggling, fun for me had to become a spinoff of other categories. What I realized is what is “fun” to me is something that others usually criticize me for. I had to first learn to be okay with that. My first example came with teaching a 4 a.m. BodyPump class. It’s fitness and it’s friends. Mostly for me it became about ‘fun”. We had dress up days and parties. We had stories and laughter. This became about how I could invite more people to have fun with their fitness and even meet new friends. To others I am crazy, but to me and some 20 or so other people, we just have fun.
#7 Finance
Money. Money is last but still of the utmost importance because money is the tool that supports the rest of the pictures on the board. You need it to live but can we stop judging money for being too little or too much? This is about supporting the lifestyle you’ve designed so what does all the other categories take to make it happen? Is it $20,000 a month or $3,000? You must track it or you lack it. Write yourself a check for the amount of money you plan to make in a year and tape it to the board. Get a picture of your dream car and write PAID WITH CASH under it. Write Debt Free on the board or the amount you want to see your net worth. Whatever it is, drop your ego and judgement and dream a little bigger. The more money, the more impact you could make.
