2020 Vision

The practice of intention setting sometimes gets a bad rap.  Many times, I have experienced people calling it weird.  They quickly tell me “it is not that I think that having a goal is a bad thing, but it is just that, like, meditating on it?  What the heck does that mean?”  I also think that there are a lot of people out there that don’t totally understand what it means and think that the idea “intention setting practices” means that those of us that do it believe that putting our thoughts out into the world is going to magically make all of our dreams and goals appear in front of our faces. 

That is absolutely not the way that it works. 

Now, keep in mind, that all of my understanding of the idea of intention setting comes from my own personal experience with the practices that work for me as well as my own personal understanding of why it is helpful for me (hint-it is not because I think things magically appear without a slight of hand or a LOT of hard work). 

Nearly every therapist that I know encourages their clients to make a vision board.  This includes me.  For years, I told pretty much every client I had to identify their goals, assign images or symbols to those goals,  and then create a “board” full of those images or symbols to post on a wall in their home so that they can see it ever day.  Pretty much every client.

Keep in mind that I sincerely believe that different things work for different people.   There are SO many ideas out there that I am often asking clients “well have you ever thought of …” with things that I have never done, or fully done, myself.  For a long time, a vision board was one of them.  I usually set goals quarterly and knew what I wanted but had never put my thoughts together and decided what that goal would “look like” so that I could represent it visually. 

Until late 2018, that is.  I made my very first vision board around November of 2018. 

I did a meditation that my mentor called “The Perfect Day” where I imagined myself living through my perfect day 10 years in the future.  I imagined how I would wake up.  I imagined where I would live (both location and type of home).  I imagined where I would spend my time and who I would spend it with. 

Then, I made a list of all of the things that were a part of my perfect day.

Then, I made a list of the things that would need to happen within 5 years in order to make that 10-year perfect day a reality.

Then, I made a list of the things that I needed to be working on in the next year in order for 5 years to be a reality so that 10 years can be reality. 

Then, I scoured the internet for images that I thought represented a few things from each of those lists.  Lots of people use the technique where you cut out of magazines and collage, which I think works really well.  I am just a very particular kind of gal and I had really strong feeling about finding the “right” images that really represented what I wanted. 

I used an online print shop and made a collage of those images to be printed poster-style and I hung that bad boy up on my refrigerator where I can see it every day.  AND IT HAS BEEN A GAME CHANGER.

See, the practice of setting intentions is NOT magic.   It is identifying the things you want out of this life and actively keeping it in the forefront of your mind so that you will naturally make choices that are in service of that goal. 

Over the course of 2019: I started a blog, trained for a half-marathon, applied for a TED Talk and was selected and have recorded a handful of episodes for my podcast set to launch in 2020.  NONE OF THOSE THINGS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED if I had not looked at that vision board every single day.  I mean that sincerely.  All of them required a great deal of work.  All of them required me to set aside time to complete tasks associated with them.  But it was the action of keeping these goals in the forefront of my mind.  Visually setting the intention to work on these things each morning.  And the reminder that I could be writing a blog post instead of watching Friends for the 15^th time (or while I was watching it!) that kept me moving forward. 

It was not a perfect system…

I did not post on my blog weekly like I intended (and I am pretty sure that the only one who reads it on a regular basis is my Mom-Hi Mom!)

I am not actually going to run the whole half marathon in two weeks, but it is absolutely the furthest I will have every walked/run in my life.

I still haven’t finished the rough draft of my Ted Talk that is due next week.

I don’t really know how to do a podcast, so I am limping along figuring it out as I go. 

But I am doing it each day.  I am taking small steps towards achieving these goals that I set for myself. 

A few weeks ago, I even updated my vision board for 2020.  I invite a bunch of friends and family to my house, led them in a meditation and taught them how to make a vision board.  So, not only do I have a shiny new set of goals (with several of the old ones still there since I am still working towards them), I have a community of gal pals to hold me accountable to achieving these goals.

See, intention setting is a lot more powerful than any of us know.   It isn’t magic, identifying your goals will only get you so far, but it does drive you forward.  And forward we shall go.  Here is to a new year and a new decade! I was livin’ the dream in 2019, bring on 2020!