Planning Your New Life

Planning Your New Life

One of the joys of a new year is the opportunity to imagine what it might contain, and then to make plans to actually get yourself there. This planning stage is fun because it is bounded only by your imagination. You can make vision boards of your ideal life, lists of things you would complete if you were 100% efficient at everything—plans that in your mind are contingent on something particular being different about your life this year, which of course it will be. 😉😘

Aspiration vs. Reality

However, if we actually want to use our planning to good purpose, we need to meet somewhere in the middle between “aspiration” (out there) and “realistic” (boring).

If we don’t keep the “aspiration” alive, we lose the unrealized parts of ourselves that are still waiting to come out. We lose the opportunity to be more than we have been. This is something you definitely don’t want to lose when you are planning a new life!

So, can we keep in mind the limits that we know exist in our life while also imagining the best versions of ourselves and what we would most like to accomplish in order to reach that idea that we have?

Aspire! But ground it in reality if you really want to get there. Determine concrete steps to get yourself to where you’ve never been before.

Vision Boards

In the past I felt I never had time to sit down with scissors and paste and make an old-fashioned vision board collage. So I used Pinterest instead as a more convenient method of creating a “vision board”.By clicking around looking at the available posts and adding them to a yearly “vision board”, I was able to consolidate some thoughts about things that I wanted, and see them visually. I do think this is a helpful way to bring some of your less-conscious desires to the forefront where you can think about and plan toward them better.This year I actually did sit down with a bunch of magazines and old photos and cut out words, phrases, and images that felt like they were part of the image I had for my life. It was oddly satisfying, but it did take a while!Still, there is something about the tactile experience of crafting, and the rest that you give your mind as you focus on this low stress activity that seems helpful, if you can manage it.I also incorporated images of myself into these collages which made it feel more personal and more realistic. It felt more like a board for myself and not just about things I liked about other people and situations. This was something I hadn’t done before, but that I plan to continue to do forevermore. It really made the vision board feel more real.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.

Yogi Berra

Planners Keep You Organized

As I’m always juggling a number of commitments, I’ve used a planner for years to keep myself aware of the deadlines and appointments I have coming up. I’ve always found written planners to be more comfortable and helpful for me than the digital ones, but, to each their own.

What I do know is that I would forget a lot of important deadlines and appointments, if not for my planner! It’s very helpful to just be able to glance at it every morning to see what I have coming up each day.

Decorate Them To Enjoy The Process!

This year I decided to try the Passion Planner, and go all in with some of the markers and stickers they offer as accessories.I also had Sharpie pens from the past that I like to use in my planners to help make them pretty, so I am using those as well.Although I’m not as artsy as those who made the planner images for the Passion Planner ads, I have found that using their paper stickers (I love the quality, especially of the New Year and Nature packs), highlighters, and Sharpie pens to decorate and plan each week makes me feel so much more optimistic and put-together when I look at my schedule throughout the course of the day.

The Passion Planner

Another helpful aspect of this planner is that it leads you through making “mind maps” to clarify your step-by-step goals for the year, month, and week. It also provides you with reflection questions at the end of each month to help you look back and assess how things are going.I actually put my cut-and-paste vision board on a spread of blank pages in the back of my planner so I can see it all the time. And I added a “year-at-a-glance” and “year in pixels” journal insert so that at the end of the year I can have a visual summary of how it all went!

My Experience

So far, I am really liking this planner setup. Having everything organized and pretty like this really helps my motivation. And setting it up each month is a diverting quiet-time activity that helps clear my head and re-focus it on my intentions.

How to Plan Your New Life

In summary, here are the steps I suggest taking in planning your new life this year:

Start with a vision board.
Take the ideas sparked by your vision board and make a “mind map” of what it would mean, in terms of concrete changes, to accomplish that vision.
Break down the steps involved in creating each of those changes.
Make goals each month that lead you through the steps you planned.
Break these monthly goals down into weekly goals.
Each month take some time to reflect on how far you have come and adjustments you may need to make.
Enjoy the journey.

reflections starting fresh

Cat

April 4, 2022