The Importance of Personal Life Planning

It’s often easy to ignore your personal life when you begin laying out your quarterly and yearly business goals. It goes without saying that as a leader you are always thinking strategically about your business: you set up benchmarks for success, discuss your goals and plan for the future business that you’d like to grow. While business planning is second nature to many great leaders, personal life planning is often undervalued and ignored. 

Personal life planning refers to taking the time to think holistically about your life and set up goals and priorities for each area of your life. Business can be one of those areas, but if you are doing personal life planning, it should not be the only area that you plan around. For example, a significant part of my life is family. When I plan for the future that I am working to build, they are an important aspect of that future. To ensure that I am properly building them into my planning, I have to take time to ask questions such as, “how much time do I want to be spending with my family on a day-to-day basis?” and “what resources do I want to be able to provide my children?” 

By asking these questions, I ensure that the work I am doing will help me to build a thriving life and not just a thriving business. Too often, I’ve come across individuals who have built amazing businesses but who, in the process, ignored other aspects of their lives. Personal life planning is a way to ensure that you do not ignore those critical parts of your life.

“You can’t be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.”

— Zig Ziglar

One way to make personal life planning a practice is to create a personal vision for yourself. Above, you will see some images from our team member’s vision boards. If you would like to learn more about vision boarding, and the powerful role it can play in personal life planning, click here.

Another powerful exercise to envision a future that you want to create is to go through what we call the Legacy Vision tool. This tool captures all that you want to be and do on a ten-to-thirty year timeline, and it will ask you to transport yourself into that future and answer questions such as: 

1. Who do you serve with your business? Who do you serve in other areas of your life?

2. What is your impact? How do you want to be remembered?

3. How long are you working? How much time do you spend with family and friends? What is your relationship with your family and friends like? 

For a complete set of exercises and questions, feel free to download our Legacy Vision Tool. Once you answer the questions and reflect on your future, you will have the information you need to draft a vision for your future. This vision can be one that you create with prose, bullet points or even with diagrams. The point of the vision is to have open space to envision what a thriving life looks like for you.

Vision Boarding: Creating Your Future and Your Personal Why

There is no correct time to invest in personal growth, but the beginning of each year is always a motivator for people to lay out big plans for their personal life. Here at PFD, we encourage companies to have a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), 3HAG, and 1HAG, but we are also working on our personal Vision Boards (VB).

A Vision Board is your personal WHY.

That feeling of being overwhelmed or feeling like you are on a hamster wheel is taxing on your mental and physical health. A VB is a fabulous tool to keep you motivated and focused, which is enormously important as we all continue to face uncertain times.

My (Liz Kaufman’s) Vision Board - Pictures on a useable whiteboard. It has some visual elements with a focus on functionality, as I wanted the ability to regularly update it with words that are inspiring to me.

Whether you have built a VB in the past or if this is your first time, we have some advice on how to get started:

Know What You Want

Most advice with regards to building a VB includes, “if you have no time or money limitations, what do you want”. This advice is exactly what is needed, but can be overwhelming, therefore we have two activities to help:

• MY 75 – Taking the advice of no limitations due to time, money, or circumstances, list 75 things you want and want to achieve. Do not overthink this activity, just begin listing your hearts’ desires. Here are a few questions to help you get started:

  •  Where do you want to go?

  • Who do you want to meet?

  • What do you want to read and/or learn?

  • Who do you want to help?

  • What is the newest gadget that makes you excited?

  • What relationships would you like to grow?

• I AM statements – This activity is used by many personal growth coaches. When you write down “I AM” statements, it helps you actualize who you want to become. This is about your heart, mind, and soul. Words are the building blocks of your life, so ensure you are speaking positive words about yourself. Here are a few statements to help you get started:

  • I am generous with my money and time

  • I am respected within my care

  • I am part of a caring and loving family

  • I am an entrepreneur

  • I am confident

  • I am a home owner

Emmalee Harper’s Vision Board. It is made on two acrylic sheets sandwiched together, with printed pictures in between. It is highly visual and design-focused, with some added functionality of being able to write on it with a dry-erase marker. 

Build Your Vision Board

There is no right or wrong way to build your VB. There are only two qualifications; it should fit your personality/style and you should be able to see it daily. Here are a few ideas:

Materials

All you need is a blank wall, some pictures, paper, and tape, however, there are many examples of materials that can build a Vision Board that will work for your space and personality. A few ideas include:

• Corkboard 

• Whiteboard

• Acrylic Board (following this tutorial)

• Canvas

• Blank wall

• Window 

Style

Whether it be highly stylized or simple, it should be both functional and energizing. At PFD we have three examples of styles that you’ll see throughout this post:

• My (Liz’s) Vision Board - Pictures on a useable whiteboard. It has some visual elements with a focus on functionality, as I wanted the ability to regularly update it with words that are inspiring to me.

• Emmalee Harper’s Vision Board – It is made on two acrylic sheets sandwiched together, with printed pictures in between. It is highly visual and design-focused, with added some functionality of being able to write on it with a dry-erase marker. She also added some gold leaf to the pictures as an extra, fun touch.

• Ethan Martin’s Vision Board - Magazine clippings on canvas. It is highly visual, comprised of inspiring pictures and quotes.

Content

You do not need to include everything from you, MY 75 or I AM statements, but ensure your board is a mix of categories, personal growth, inspirational quotes, huge aspirations that scare you, short term wins that will energize you, and anything else that speaks to you. This board is YOU poured out into a visualization; it is not supposed to speak to someone else.

Ethan Martin’s Vision Board - Magazine clippings on canvas. It is highly visual, comprised of inspiring pictures and quotes.

Keep Your Board Fresh

As you achieve a win, first celebrate it, then replace it with a new goal (which is why you developed a My 75 and I AM statements). Adding to it often helps you to work on your future and refine the view of your life. Some areas may come into deeper clarity, while others may stay the same for a year and get moved to the next year. Your VB is always a work in progress. 

The last piece of advice is, get started. Create a grand vision for your life and speak it into existence each day. Though it may seem simple, this is a powerful tool. The PFD Team is here to help and we encourage you to share your Vision Boards, and we will be sharing ours.