I’m feeling 2023, you guys. I’ve this hunch that it’s going to be a 12 months filled with progress and journey, and if you happen to clicked into this publish, I’ve a sense you’re additionally able to embrace the 12 months forward with open arms and an open thoughts. I’m a giant believer in setting targets with a view to deliberately head within the path of our desires, and for me, the beginning of a brand new 12 months is probably the most highly effective time to do it. Final 12 months, I shared the Imaginative and prescient Workbook that I created and use myself to reside extra purposefully all 12 months lengthy, and at this time—I’m so excited to share this 12 months’s Imaginative and prescient Workbook 2.0!
Over the course of 2022, I made a number of tweaks to how I take advantage of the workbook myself, so I wished to create a model that helps us go deeper and is even extra impactful for outlining your “why” and creating the lifetime of your desires. So, seize your Imaginative and prescient and Purpose Setting Workbook proper right here, and let’s dive in!
Right here’s Why I Write Down My Imaginative and prescient for the 12 months
There’s lots of content material about manifestation and imaginative and prescient boarding, and white it’s heavy on the visualizing, typically it stops wanting really serving to me map out a strategic plan to brings it to life. I’m an enneagram 3, y’all. I like a roadmap. I want to know the “how.” And that’s why this workbook is an incredibly powerful tool in my life.
Here’s the deal: Visualization, plus a tactical plan for doing the work, is the secret to making real traction towards creating our dream lives.
Throughout January, I’m going to be sharing a series of posts on how I walk through my vision workbook. It starts with creating the vision (what this post is all about), then defining my top priorities for each area of life: relationships, career, health, and personal growth. As a final step, I articulate one powerful thing I can do in each of those spheres to make the most traction towards my long-term goal. It helps me visualize how I want the year to look in an organized way that I can revisit and remind myself of daily.
Today, with the fresh start of a new year, we’re going to focus on creating that high-level vision. It’s what will fuel your passion and make you want to jump out of bed every morning and get after it. We’re going to give ourselves permission to dream big, get creative, and approach our lives with an abundance mindset. This step should be really fun, and it’s key to the process. And remember:
“You only need to know the direction, not the destination. The direction is enough to make the next choice.” – James Clear
How to Create a Vision for the Life You Want to Live:
It’s pretty typical for companies to create mission statements or vision statements to inspire and give direction to their teams. It’s how a business articulates their goals for the future, and defines how they’re going to get there. But I think it’s equally important to take the same intentional approach in who we’re becoming day-by-day, year-by-year, and this requires crafting a purposeful vision for your life.
Here are the 9 steps I use to create my own vision. I walk you through each of these in the Vision Workbook so you can define your own.
1. Write Your 2023 Mantra
If the entire workbook is the long version of your 2023 vision, consider your mantra to be the short version—typically just a sentence or a few words. You want to be able display it where you’ll see it daily, and quickly repeat it when you need to recenter. Though I lead with this step in the workbook, you may not know your mantra right away, and that’s okay. Complete the rest of the steps first, then come back to this one once you’ve been able to look for patterns and themes.
This year, my own mantra is:
Less distraction, more engagement.
Here are other examples of mantras I’ve written through the years to help get the creativity flowing:
- Slow down, stop rushing.
- Raise your energy.
- Enjoy today.
- Be here now.
- Simplify.
- Have more fun.
2. What Does Your Dream Life Look Like?
- Where are you?
- Who are you with?
- How do you feel?
- What does “success” look like for you?
I always find that this exercise unlocks some new realization for me. It helps me get clear on what I actually want, instead of what I think I should want.
3. How Do You Want to Feel This Year?
Next, create a list of emotions that you want to feel more of in 2023. Part of the Daily Practice in the workbook is reviewing this list each morning to ask, “How can I feel more of these today?” It’s amazing how setting an intention for the way you want to feel changes the way we carry ourselves through the day. Try to limit your list to no more than 5, so you can actually focus in on these and incorporate them throughout your day.
Here is my list for this year:
- Present
- Curious
- Energized
4. When Are You the Happiest?
It’s a simple question that may unlock some major aha’s for you. How often do we go on autopilot and forget to ask ourselves if we’re incorporating the things that make us happy into our day-to-day lives? A little soul searching may uncover that you’re happiest when you’re cooking, walking with a friend, trying a new sport, traveling, or lost in a good book. Whatever it is, the goal is to intentionally make more time for that in your life this year.
5. Where Do You Want to Go This Year?
So often, our travel plans get pushed to the bottom of our priority list, and then we’re making decisions in the eleventh hour based on flight costs or our busy schedule. What if we took a more proactive approach to our travel destinations by dreaming at the beginning of a new year about where we most want to visit? Then, we can take an honest look at our calendar and our budgets and get creative about how to make it happen. I usually target one “big trip” a year and a couple smaller trips to places in the US. You may not get to them all in 2023, but I’m confident that if you take this approach, that “dream spot” will be in your future. Here are mine this year:
- Costa Rica (it’s already scheduled))
- Los Olivos, CA (need to plan this)
- Japan (stretch goal)
6. Who Are the People in Your Life You Want to Prioritize?
For several years, I’ve kept a note in my Evernote called “My List.” It’s ten or so names of people in my life (outside my family) who are top priority. These are the people I want to invest in, spend time with, and cultivate our relationship in a meaningful way this year. We all know how busy life gets, and keeping this list in a place where I can easily access helps me remember to check in and stay connected through the year.
In this step, you simply make a list of the friends, co-workers, extended family, etc who you want to prioritize this year–keep it short enough so that you can really invest in each of them.
7. What Books Do You Want to Read This Year?
I like to set an intention at the beginning of the year for a few books that I want to read start-to-finish. Four means one book a season–feel free to get ambitious and up your number to one a month.
Here’s my list for 2023. The first two are tied to two of my goals (continuing to develop my voice as a writer, and being a better listener with my kids) and the last two are beautiful narratives that I want to dive into.
- Everybody Writes, by Ann Handley
- Good Inside, by Dr. Becky Kennedy
- A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
- A Heart That Works, by Rob Delaney
8. What’s One Factor You Wish to Study This 12 months?
Studying one thing new yearly is majorly inspiring—and it’s cool to suppose that at the same time as an grownup, if you happen to study one new factor yearly, in 20 years you’ll have cultivated 20 new abilities, hobbies, languages, and so on. That mentioned, some of us could be a bit too, ahem, bold about what we’re really going to study in a 12 months.
For the aim of this train, I prefer to give attention to simply ONE factor I’m going to study within the 12 months forward. Don’t snort, however this 12 months my purpose is that I need to discover ways to do face yoga. Critically (google it.)
9. Create a Imaginative and prescient Board
For the uninitiated, a imaginative and prescient board is the visible illustration of your targets. It’s usually made up of phrases and pictures, and is supposed to supply inspiration and remind you the place you’re headed. It doesn’t matter what your targets are—to decelerate, to start out an organization, to be a greater father or mother, to journey extra, to be extra artistic, to exercise on daily basis—a imaginative and prescient board is a software that may be extremely highly effective on the journey.
So, how do you really make a imaginative and prescient board? Effectively, I like to start out by finishing all the opposite components of the Imaginative and prescient Workbook first, so that you really begin the method with a strong understanding of what your individual imaginative and prescient really is. Then, you’ll be able to seek for imagery and phrases that spark these feeling and signify these targets for you. There’s actually no incorrect solution to do it.
I like to make digital imaginative and prescient boards in Canva—they’ve templates with every kind of lovely layouts that make it straightforward for newcomers. Simply import your inspiration pictures and prepare them right into a collage on the digital canvas.
Nonetheless, for the start of the 12 months, there’s actually nothing like utilizing my palms to make a large-scale imaginative and prescient board that lives in my workplace the remainder of the 12 months. I get out my stack of magazines and scissors, print pages from my Pinterest boards, and undergo my folders of postcards and stickers that I’ve saved by the 12 months. I’ll additionally use pen and paper to put in writing out quotes or inspiring phrases that I need to see on daily basis.
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You probably did it! How does it really feel? Look again by your Imaginative and prescient Workbook and rejoice—you’ve taken your first main step in designing your dream life this 12 months, and try to be so happy with what you’ve created. If you happen to haven’t but grabbed your individual copy of the workbook, entry it proper right here. Subsequent week I’ll be sharing how I sort out the following step—setting targets and making a strategic plan to achieve them.