Project Geode: Part One, Creating Your Vision

There is no point in striving for change if you don’t have a plan of action. I’m someone who needs to take notes, make schedules, and plan in advance to make sure I get things done, and if I don’t, I will most likely be on my phone or computer all day, doing nothing productive, except maybe find some cool ideas on Pinterest.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Antoine de Saint Exupéry

The most important step in this journey is planning and knowing exactly how you want your life to be, which is different for everyone! So right now, we will focus on organizing our thoughts, and focus on actually doing in later posts.

Creating Your Vision Board

Materials:

Medium sized bulletin board (mine comes with ribbons attached and small clothespins)

Plain white paper (you can also use some scrapbook paper)

Colored pens and highlighters (I used a black gel pen and a pastel pink highlighter to match my theme)

Scissors

Computer

Printer

Thumbtacks

Let’s get started!

1. Goals

The first thing I did was think about who the best version of myself is. This part might be hard to think about for a myriad of reasons. Instead of thinking about stagnant, end results, maybe think about a process or mindset that you can always work towards; this will be a journey, these five steps that I planned out won’t be the be-all-end-all. It’s not like you can complete the five steps and be done, this is something that will be hard, something that you will have to keep working towards and pushing yourself until it’s not hard anymore, until it’s natural.

Unrealistic beauty standards are so heavily prominent in the media that it has become customary to have at least some issues with your body image, especially in women and girls. Because it’s an everyday struggle, I’ll use it as an example. Instead of maybe thinking ‘the best version of myself is skinnier,’ or ‘more muscular,’ or ‘this many pounds,’ think ‘the best version of myself is happier about her body/appearance,’ or ‘is more disciplinary when it comes to eating nutritious foods.’

Now, think about what this means. What do you have to do in order to achieve this? The two examples I used are actually two of my own goals. Both of these examples, if you think about it, have more to do with mindset than anything else, or feeling good rather than necessarily looking good. Setting a broad goal is important because it allows you to find new ways of achieving it. Saying ‘I want to be skinnier,’ or ‘this many pounds,’ could lead to unhealthy habits such as exercising too much, going on an unhealthy diet, or even eating disorders. To achieve my goals, I’ll say affirmations to remind myself that I am beautiful and healthy, inside and out, trading negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and eating foods that make me feel better (less fat, trading added sugars for natural sugars, but I will get more into nutrition in a later post). The rest of my goals are: feel well-rested, see myself positively, have a happier and healthier lifestyle, be more social, and stress less.

2. Write it Down!

On a small piece of paper, write down your broad goals. Now, like we practiced, write down ways to achieve them on an individual, separate sheet of paper! To feel well-rested, I wrote down a morning and night routine with a bedtime and a wake-up time to get a good amount of sleep (which for me is about 8 hours). To see myself positively and stress less, I wrote ‘focus on the positive’ and my affirmations (which can be anything to make you more confident, but mine are: I am confident, I am strong, I am smart, I am amazing, I am worthy, I won’t give others power over my emotions, and I deserve the world). To live a happier and healthier lifestyle, I wrote, ‘do more things to make me happy,’ ‘organize clothes and have style,’ and ‘get rid of toxic people.’ I also made lists on how to stay productive, eating healthier, and what I should and shouldn’t care about (opinions of people and activities that matter to you vs. everything else).

3. Decorating!

Now is the fun part! But, this part also took me the longest… I grabbed a bunch of background pictures off of Pinterest and printed them, along with some cute quotes and just cute and fun pictures in general (finding all of these pictures took me about 4 hours because they had to be perfect). Once I found all of the pictures I tried to size and arrange them on a document to use the least amount of paper and ink possible, while still making sure the lists I made would fit on them. For my ‘do more things to make me happy’ list, I printed some pictures of writing and dancing, and for my ‘organize clothes and have style’ paper, I printed some pictures of outfits that I like. I also made a collage of aesthetic pictures and quotes to put on my board. After all of these are printed, glue the backgrounds, special pictures, and quotes to the lists! This is where you let your creative side out, so do whatever feels like you!

4. Arrange

Last step! Put it all together on your bulletin board using thumbtacks or clothespins and ribbon! After I finished mine, I felt so proud and accomplished. I officially had a plan, and now you do too!

Read more from the Project Geode series by clicking the ‘PROJECT GEODE’ button below or in the tag cloud on the right side of the screen!