Creating a vision board for the year ahead will help you set goals that are just out of reach but not too far ahead
Yet another year gone and a new one ahead of us. It is that time of the year when some or most of us set goals and take up New Year resolutions. It is our family tradition to make vision boards each year—all of us, including my children, create our own vision board that sits in our bedroom, for us to see what we want to achieve for the year. We have done this for the last four years and hence I consider myself a pro!
Here are my top tips for creating a resolutions board.
- Choose a day and time where you can switch off your mobile and stay away from distractions (including family). May be head to a café or someplace quiet and different to your daily environment.
- Ask yourself questions on how you want your ideal life to look like. There are no limitations here. On a blank sheet of paper, write down how you want every day to look like—from when you wake up to when you go to bed at night.
- A vision board or setting goals is not just about work and money! It is much more than that—LIFE is much more than that. So jot down other aspects of your life too—healthy eating, exercise for your body, quiet time for your mind, quality time with your family every day, helping other people, your social life, time for yourself doing whatever you want to do and so on.
- Once you’ve written down about your dream life, the next step is to make a plan out of it. What I mean by this is if your aim is to get eight hours of sleep (for example), then you need to specify exactly what time you will go to bed everyday—so you give your body that chance to get rest and feel rejuvenated. If it is about your work, then have a long term and short term goal—say in five years, you want to be in X position or making X amount of dollars, whereas in the short term, you want to set up in place how to achieve this goal.
- You can do this for various aspects of your life from money to health to spirituality to hobby to travel—pretty much anything that your heart desires.
- Next, you choose pictures for each aspect and print and stick these on your vision board. Hang it wherever you can see it every day. The trick here is to not overcrowd your vision board. If you have too many things to do, your brain gets overwhelmed and confused with not being able to achieve goals.
- Also, the goals you set must be just out of reach and not too far ahead. If for example you are making $80,000 from your work, set a goal to achieve $100k-$120k in the next year, not $1million in the next year. See what I mean?
The most important thing after creating this vision board is to take action. You can have a beautiful board sitting in your room, but if you don’t take action, none of it will come true, because it is not a magic board—but just a reminder of all YOU wanted to do in 2018.
Good luck with creating your vision board. Hopefully, you take it up as a family activity and I wish you all the best for a fulfilling 2018.
I would love to hear from you how you went with this activity.
The writer is an entrepreneur, mother and Director of Smart Money Solutions, a mortgage broking firm helping female professionals with their home loans. She is also the author of “Smart Women, Smart Home loans”, a blogger, a speaker; above all one woman wanting to empower other women to live a happy, free life. You can get in touch with questions or suggestions on obu.ramaraj@smartmoneysolutions.com.au. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oburamaraj/; Website: www.oburamaraj.com
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