I’m still on hiatus, working on my vision board for 2019 and planning how I am going to accomplish my BHAG in 11 months time. Honestly, it is the biggest, hairiest and most audacious goal I’ve ever set, so I’m taking the entire month to set myself up for success. I hope this post from the Legacy Series will encourage and inspire you to take some time to dream, plan and hope in the power of intention and all it holds for a life lived well.
Be sure to share your posts in the link-up and encourage one another also. I’ll be back next week with a creative, digital vision board idea, a new series, and some special giveaways as we begin a brand new year of community and friendship at Fresh Market Friday!
We all have a vision of what we want our life to be. At some point we dream and plan for how we’re going to get there. There’s an excitement and a sense of wonder as we ponder the possibilities.
And then life happens. Change interrupts everything. The unexpected quickly derails us and very often our life plan becomes nothing more than a survival plan for how to get through the next day.
So how do we navigate change and make way for the unexpected while staying on track with our life plan?
How do we turn our dreaming into reality?
If you’ve been following the Legacy Building Series, so far we’ve explored our strengths, successes and sweet spots, and we’ve narrowed down our key life areas and purpose within each to create our legacy mission statement.
Now it’s time to put all of these things into action by creating our life plan and visual testimony of that plan. Think of it as a reminder of what is most important to us and how we want to see that grow and flourish. Visualize it as a yardstick that helps us gauge our progress and a continuous image of hope signifying the truth that our purpose is so much more than existing.
A goal without a plan is just a wish. Antoine de Saint-Exupery~ Share on XThe next step in creating our life plan begins with brainstorming.
How will we get there?
What is essential and what is not?
What actions can we take today to reach our goal tomorrow?
What will we need to do to be the person we want to be?
At the end of our life, what do we most want to be remembered for?
It begins by moving beyond our key areas and into our roles. We each have many different roles, and we can choose to be reactive or proactive in our roles. The choice we make determines the actions we will or will not take.
One of the items on my life map, when my children were very young, fell within my role as a mother. Looking back at my own life, music was essential, both as a passion and a study. I had personal goals for music, but I also had goals of how I wanted to pass this on to my children. The proactive choice I made was to ensure each child had an opportunity to learn to play an instrument.
This wasn’t an easy goal. It wasn’t always a shared goal. And it certainly wasn’t a short-term goal.
Instead, it was a longtime commitment involving consistency, patience, and encouragement. Keeping this goal at the forefront during the days of lack was crucial for all of us.
Now many years later, all of my children have a huge love of music. This led one down the path of his life’s work as a worship pastor and songwriter and another as a competitive bagpiper while also living out his passion as a professor. I could have never known how it would play out, but attaching a goal to the area that was important to me in my role as a mother gave me a place to create action.
Now, seeing and hearing how that consistent action has been used and written by God as a part of my legacy and my son’s is an amazing gift…
(Available on iTunes and Spotify)
Once we have our goals set within our key roles, a great way to keep a visual testimony alive and make sure we are staying on track with our life plan is through a vision board.
The vision board can be singular or plural. I have a vision board in my office which helps me stay focused and centered around the vocational area of my life plan. I have another for areas of my personal life. There is no right or wrong way to create a vision board. It just needs to be something that works for you. Something that represents a living, active reminder of where you want to be.
A living, active reminder that…
~communicates purpose
~cultivates confidence
~centers our focus
~challenges our limitations
~creates space for growth
~calls us to gratitude
Most importantly, a vision board has the capacity to grow our faith as we continually lay our desires before the Lord and seek wisdom and discernment for how to accomplish our goals. When change comes, we are more prone to trust. When the unexpected slams smack into our plan, we can lean on the promise that God will still make a way.
And when a detour threatens to knock us off our path, we can submit our doubts and fears to the One who created us with a purpose…
that far exceeds even our biggest, hairiest, and most audacious life plan.
In case you missed the previous Legacy Series Posts:
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