Goal-Setting and Vision Boards:
Creating Your Future
It’s the first week of January—new opportunity to write a new book for your life with 12 chapters and 365 pages all leading to the end of the year when you’ve either achieved or failed at the goals you set at the beginning of the year.
If you let it, it can feel daunting to stare wide-eyed into the future year and have expectations on change blink back at you. This year, I’ll get my finances in order. Blink. Maybe I’ll finally lose these last 20 pounds. Blink.
Despite how many people set resolutions, a large number aren’t successful. Resolutions focus on broad, sweeping change—I resolve to eat better, I resolve to save more for retirement, or I resolve to look more polished and well-kempt this year—without giving you a roadmap on how to get there.
It’s why I recommend vision boards and goal-setting.
Vision boards let you create the future you want!
When I first divorced, I was overwhelmed with all the possible outcomes for my future. Some were very negative potentials: Would I be poor at retirement because I had been a homemaker and didn’t have meaningful social security income? Do aches and pains and flab become permanent with age?
Could I look far enough out to grab onto a different future? I decided I could build a different future outcome. I didn’t have accept my starting point as my ending point too.
The way to envision a different ending point is to create a vision board. Take time to collect images that reflect where you want to go—a thinner you, a more polished you, and a financially savvy you. My vision board that first year included an image of a nest egg to represent building a retirement income outside of social security, a woman standing in front of a townhome door with key in hand, and even a couple of bible verses that reflected directions to go.
Could I look far enough out to grab onto a different future? I decided I could build a different future outcome. I didn’t have accept my starting point as my ending point too.
Don't stop with the vision board, though! Goal-setting makes the vision happen.
Once you have visualized your future, you need a plan to make it happen. You can’t just picture yourself with a retirement nest egg of $1.5 million. You need a concrete strategy to make it happen. This is where goal-setting comes in.
The standard for goal-setting is to use SMARTer goals—specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound goals, followed up with evaluation and reward. For example, you can know how to lose 20 pounds by calculating your calorie needs. Put that down in a SMARTer goal, “I will lose 20 pounds by December 31 by eating XXXX calories a day, and I will evaluate my success by tracking my calories daily in a nutrition tracking app.”
The "e" in SMARTer goals is for evaluation. Assessing how you are doing on achieving your goals should be something you do regularly. Every quarter, I reflect back on the progress I've made toward my goals and adjust where I need to for the coming quarter.
The one exception to quarterly review I would make is budgeting. Budgets need to be reviewed every month. Each month has different needs--February has Valentine's Day, you may have kids' birthdays to plan in certain months, etc. I'll talk about budgets more in an upcoming post.
Start 2022 off on the right path. Create your vision board and set some SMARTer goals today!
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ABOUT ME
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I stood in your very shoes three years ago—looking into the future as uncharted waters.
Since that day three years ago, I have restored my health, built a career, found financial stability, and reclaimed my sense of style and poise.
You too can walk through this valley and come out the other end as you, take two.
