In my last post, I provided an overview of a Vision Board and the benefits in seeing your dreams on a board that you develop. Vision Boards provide personal motivation and make each day purpose-driven - even the difficult days. In turbulent times, life dreaming and planning may feel empty. We might feel like planning our long-term future is futile when the next few weeks are unpredictable. However, in times like we are all currently facing, this sort of life planning is more important than ever. This life planning gives us a “North Star” to always be aligning to, to make progress on, and to give us hope, regardless of the immediate difficulties we are facing.
Below are a few helpful reminders that should guide you as you dive into life planning in times of uncertainty:
Facts over feelings.
Whether it is a global pandemic or a personal hardship, we tend to focus on the immediate feelings and make decisions based on that immediacy. Unfortunately, those feelings tend to be anxiety and fear based. Life planning allows us to focus on facts, future, and hope - taking a step back from our current circumstances that are causing us to fear. When we take a step back, we can contextualize those circumstances so we can make wise decisions.
Focus on short term wins.
In turbulent times, it can be difficult to feel like we are making any progress on our goals, when we are consistently dealing with little emergencies that arise. So, to make sure we are indeed moving forward, we need to focus on the “little wins” that will eventually add up to larger wins, and eventually into your goals being accomplished. During a particularly difficult time in my life, I had a friend tell me that if “day by day” was too big, focus on “minute by minute”. In times of stress and overwhelm, Vision Boards, or any type of life planning can feel too big. We encourage you not to turn away from those big dreams, but instead focus on what you can “win” at in the short-term. A great place to start is with self-care goals like eating properly, drinking enough water, daily journaling, reading positive content. Those short-term wins will propel your desire and ability to achieve more.
Build new life skills.
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”
― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Life will always throw curve balls at us. It is how we handle those times and what we learn from it, that will determine our future. Learning how to deal with challenges will make the next challenge easier to overcome. Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, is an excellent book that focuses on cultivation of tenacity. If you truly want to accomplish your big-picture life goals, you will need to learn new life skills. The person who has accomplished those goals (the person who you will be) is wiser, more experienced, more tenacious, and has more skills than you. It will take grit and tenacity through challenges to become that person, and you will need to persevere through your circumstances and challenges to get there.
With these three reminders in mind, I encourage you to take a step back from the present uncertainty of the world and either create or revisit your life plan. It is critical that you continue to engage with this plan to give yourself hope and something to work towards to effectively navigate this challenging time.
If you need some direction into your life planning, check out our blog post on vision boarding here.