Where do you envision yourself?
As 2021 begins where do you envision yourself for this year? What helps guide your vision of the future? Who helps to support that vision? How do you organize your plans for the future? Have you ever tried using a vision board to capture your plans for this year? If not, consider trying it this year? However, if you choose not to, consider envisioning this year from multiple perspectives.
Social: Family & Relationships
How do you plan on connecting with others this year? Humans thrive on human connection or feeling as though they belong. Look at your support systems. Can you say that there is an area that needs to be strengthened? If so, what aspect of it needs to be strengthened? Do you need to plan a lunch date with your old friend from college? Or connect with your families? Regardless of whom you want to connect with or even let go, consider the relationships you have and ask how are those connections supporting your overall well-being? You need positive, helpful and honest people in your corner this year to encourage your visions of growth. You’ll find that the people you allow in your corner can either aid or hinder your growth, so decide who do you need in your corner this year.
Work & Career
Some say it’s just a job. I say, if you’re going to spend all your time in one place, you should at least like what you do and where you work. Evaluate your happiness at your current workplace and consider whether you get a personal satisfaction from you career. You may need to change your workplace, position or career. Before you make the change, weigh the costs of making the change, positive and negative because you have to live with the final decision.
Self-Care & Personal growth
A lot of people take this as taking care of the body. If you want to hit the gym this year, do so, but don’t do it because you feel like you have to. Don’t call your new eating habit a diet, since cognitively we associate negative things with diet or wanting to lose weight. Lifestyle changes, as cliché as it sounds, tricks the brain into think about a plan that is long term. It doesn’t make sense to make a drastic change when you really want the change to stick long term. Ease into your self-care journey to sustain your personal growth long term. Consider one thing you’d like to do and commit to it for an entire month. Then move on to another aspect of your health to tackle until you’ve been successful enough that you don’t need a reminder to continue the progress you’ve made taking care of your body. Maybe start light with sleeping an hour more each day and then take it up a notch.
Money & Finance
Think about your finances and what you’d like to build towards this year. My husband and I sat down at the end of the year one year to explore our financial goals. Specifically, we wanted to buy a house but to get there, we had to think about what the down payment would look like, how much we needed for potential repairs and what our cushion should look like. From there we pooled our income together and discussed how much we wanted to save and would our jobs be able to cover this plan and if not should be get another job.
While you may not be seeking to build towards a home this year, I’m pretty sure you have a goal in mind. Stop and think about what exactly you want to attain whether a new job, a car, a house and create a plan for how you’re going to get there. Feeling satisfied with current and future financial situations adds to your overall well-being. How are you moving towards financial satisfaction today?
Fun & Recreation
My favorite part of envisioning motion in your well-being is having fun. Self-care is extremely important to your overall being. Find something fun to do as often as you can. Travel, play board games with your children, or go to a movie. Insert some more fun and time doing your hobbies to balance all the hard work you are already planning to do this year.