With the new year fast approaching, many people will set out to make resolutions. While resolutions can be helpful for some, I find resolutions are not the best way for me to set goals for the new year. Instead, I have found creating intentional vision boards, that reflect my goals for the year, to be much more beneficial. When creating a vision board the focus isn’t on giving something up, but provides a way to think about and document what I really want my life to look like. The process of creating this vision helps me see more clearly what I need to focus on to create that reality.
Creating a Board that Supports Family Goals
I have been creating vision boards for the better part of a decade with varying results, however, most of the items I placed on my vision board came into fruition when I used discipline and action to make the happen.
Creating a vision board doesn’t need to be an individual activity; it is something that can be done as a family. Since my husband and I were engaged, we have created a vision board every year around New Year’s. It is a great tool for us to look at our individual goals and our couple goals. We typically create one big vision board that represents our life, but that has three separate sections – one for each of us as individuals, and one for us that we create together.
When we create these boards together as a family, it provides us with an opportunity to make sure we are thinking about our lives and intentionally living them, instead of floating through life or waking up one day and wondering what we are doing. It creates a space for us to do some deep reflection, soul searching, and verbalize to each other what it is that we want as individuals (which can change significantly year to year), what we want as a couple, and what we want as a family. It allows us to have intentional conversations about what we want, what we need, and how we can get there together. It also documents those conversations to be a continuous reminder for us to focus on those goals and help each other make them come to life.
Worth the Investment
While this process is fun, it can also be time consuming as it takes time to really be intentional about our goals. No matter how much time it takes, we believe it is a worthwhile investment in ourselves and our partnership. When I asked my husband what he likes most about this process, he said that ‘having discussions yearly on our priorities and aligning to focus on a common set of goals together is really important for our partnership and our family’…and I couldn’t agree more.
Involving the Kids in the Creation Process
Last year when our daughter was two years old we had her participate in the process. While she was still a little young, she was able to help create her own mini-vision board. We focused her goals on child development (potty training, kindness, friendship, etc.) as well as asked her about what activities she wanted to do that year. The process was both a fun and creative craft project for her, good quality family time, and intentional goal setting. It was also a great way to start bringing her into our family rhythm, exposing her to goal setting early, and involving her in the creation process.
While she may not fully understand it just yet, we put it in her room and it was a great way to focus our intentions, discussions, and activities throughout the year. Within months of creating the vision board she had accomplished one of her main goals – potty training – that we had been working on for several months prior. It may have been that she was just ready, or it may have been that we set a goal to focus on and consistently work towards. Either way, it was really nice to have a constant reminder of the goals we were working toward with our daughter, and that she participated in creating that goal with us.
Using Intention and Action to Create Our Reality
I am a big believer in intention and action in creating our reality. Vision boarding is just one way to do this that has worked for me and my family. One of the most powerful things vision boarding brings is the constant reminder of CHOICE, which is why I like to do it regularly. It is really easy to get sucked into the minutia of life, never looking up or asking yourself if you’re where you want to be. It’s also easy to find ourselves falling into a victim mindset with our lives and believing that ‘things are just the way they are,’ and that ‘it would take too much work to make changes’ – whether that be with our jobs, our families, our circumstances, etc.
Even the most intentional and positive people can find themselves in ruts from time to time. Bringing a regular and disciplined practice of creation into our lives allows us to ask the questions ‘what do I want?’, ‘what do you want?’, ‘what do we want?’, and ‘what do we want our lives to look like?’. By simply asking these questions, we are reminding ourselves that we have power and choice in our lives.
Teaching Kids Tools for Personal Empowerment
Asking these questions and allowing ourselves to visualize and dream is extremely empowering. Teaching our kids this process (or something similar) is so important, because it puts them in the driver seat and empowers them to not only think about or dream it, but to start taking action towards their goals. It also carves out time for parents to have these important conversations with their kids so they can know each other better, are on the same page, and provides a chance to talk about where support is needed. It teaches accountability as it is a physical representation of our goals. Additional touchpoints and conversations can happen over the year to ensure that we are still on track and progress is being made towards our goals.
By employing a structure and practice around how to accomplish our goals, we are telling our kids they can ‘be anything they want to be’. We are teaching them to dream big and believe in themselves, and then giving them a framework for how to accomplish the things they desire most. People often feel disappointment in their lives when they have dreams but feel like they have no way to accomplish them, or know where to start. By allowing our kids to dream, and also teaching them tools for empowerment, we are setting them up for a life of independence and success.
When we as parents practice empowerment, we set positive examples for our kids. As kids grow older, we can weave these things into our family rhythms and discussions to better engage and ignite understanding. Giving our kids the gift of empowering practices they can use in their life is teaching a life skill that is just as important as knowing how to manage money, clean, cook, and do laundry. We are teaching them self-sufficiency, and that begins by looking within, asking themselves questions to get to know who they really are, and who they want to be. It is giving them a framework to be disciplined, focus on their goals and dreams to make them come true.
Getting Started
If you are looking for ways to get started, check out another article I wrote with a step by step process for how to create a vision board and manifest your dreams. The most important thing is not the fancy materials you use, but to put together an intentional practice that works for you and your family.
About the Author
Jenna Case is passionate about helping people and organizations through change and transformation. She has over 10 years of experience as an organizational effectiveness consultant working on large scale transformation initiatives and over 9 years of experience as a meditation instructor and healer certified by the Modern Mystery School. Jenna enjoys working with individuals and organizations of all kinds and believes in empowering her clients through providing tools and structure to help facilitate growth.
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