How to visualize goals when you don't know what you want - Project Me post 1058

It's that time again. The start of a new one, where the majority of us are refreshed and ready to take on new challenges. I took the whole of December to prepare myself for this year and a lot of that was refocusing on what? I have wanted for a very long time. I spend quiet time with myself and simply re-frame my vision by imagining my perfect day. I have it written out, in the most intricate detail, but it's etched in my mind and plays through my heart enough that I rolled up my vision board a while ago and put it at the back of my cupboard, and don't do much more than be grateful for all I have achieved and remind myself of what I know I can continue to manifest and create.

One of my focuses and very important goals for this year is to write my Project Me book, which has been hovering in my visions for far too many years. It's a book that people have been asking for and one that is the next and logical step for what I am trying to achieve. Basically, it's about redesigning ourselves consciously and making ourselves our own project.

It's made up of a decade of all that I have gone through to get to a point of comfortably saying I have seen some thing work and not in my life and in the world around me. The chapter are filled with my conscious beliefs and then a story or two, to hopefully hit the message home.

One of the chapters focuses on visualizations, affirmations and vision boards. Wow, I've done them all and slowly but surely, I started to empathize with people who read a self help book that begins with ... let's create a vision board.

The other day I had a big realization, that I have become so frustrated with, what I call "The Positivity Movement", where it's gone from boys don't cry to humans don't cry, that I don't do much around affirming or affirming anymore.

Then, I read a Wealthy Money blog and in Vangile Makwakwa's latest post she spoke about the power of goal setting and writing them down instead of just visualizing them. She's such an incredible inspiration on many levels, but when it comes to finance, this is the blog I am following. Her case was solid, so I took the next day or two to do what I do ... focus on my achievements first, to help my esteem and remind me of what I can manifest. Then I woke up really early in the morning and walked around in the dew soaked grass while I thought about my goals.

Then the empathy kicked in again. I've done so much of this and I have achieved a lot, but there's this overwhelming feeling of having to get these goals right, because the word on the street is that they are cast in stone. The other reality is that some people have no idea who they are or what they want to achieve. Now we must think 5 years forward and set goals?

I'm not saying don't, because it took me revisiting the exercise to remember how valuable and crucial it is. I am saying that even if you don't know where your age going ... even if you only have one or two goals. Even if your goal is to just be happier or out of debt, that's good enough.

I took down the 3rd vision board that I have done in my adult life. I got rid of the other two because, when I looked back at them, they didn't reflect who I was when I did them. Gosh, my first one was filled with baby pics and images of me sailing around the world on a yacht. Funny that, seeing that I was young and easily influenced by the blanket rule that a woman's life is incomplete if she doesn't have a baby. The yacht was way off too, considering I get sea sick on a totally still, docked boat in the calmest water.

Now I want to tell you why this happens and why setting goals can be so way off or ridiculously hard. Everyone looks for the shortcut in life. There's a quicker of doing everything, with the perfect example of the joy it used to be to cook food from the freshest ingredients and now there's an entire isle as long as a rugby field filled with "just add water" ingredients.

Along the journey of manifesting, just adding water is plotting goals without first knowing your intentions behind them. I love asking people why they set the goals they did and watching them have that light bulb moment that it's less about the "what" and more about the "why".

Who cares if you don't know what job you want to have or if you want the responsibility of that holiday home thousands of miles away, because we are told to dream big. You can't dream at all if you haven't figured out how you want your dreams to make you feel.

So, if goal setting is an aimless task that frustrates and scares you, scrap the material goals or trying to make sure you are aiming in the right direction ... if you aim wrong, you'll figure it out and head off knowing at least you have eliminated a few things you know you don't want.

Once I realised I wasn't sure of what I wanted and before I dared attempt my second vision board, all I did was set goals of happiness. I reflected back on when I was happy and when I wasn't and reconnected with what it felt like to be happy. My happy ... not the dictionary definition or how the world told me it should feel. Finding that feeling ignites something very special and I truly believe that's when the compass is set for the first time and your goals become clearer.

Here's my last bit of advice about goal setting. For every goal, have an achievement! It doesn't have to relate, but if you have 20 goals, have twenty things that you are proud of yourself for. I don't have a vision board anymore, but I do have a pin board. It's filled with pictures and words.
The words are what I want ... because words are powerful!
The pictures are what I've achieved ... because the visual reminder is a great driving force.

Today, when I pulled out my vision board, I noticed something so powerful ... I had achieved or am in the process of living out the goals that I had in words. The images made my board look pretty, but the words were the directions the Universe was waiting to hear from me.

I didn't even remember I had a road trip on my vision board, but in 3 months I'm driving from New York to Dallas for the adventure of my life.

USE YOUR WORDS!!