Have you given up on dreaming big in this season of unpredictability and global chaos?
Wondering how you can recapture your joy for life?
Join us on a journey of building Vision!
I don’t know about you, but I feel as if the last few years have been an exercise in wandering – it has been so difficult to set goals, make plans or set expectations when at any moment, things can be upended. All of us dealt with the complete upheaval of life that COVID brought in 2020; many of us witnessed propaganda, viewpoints and behaviors from loved ones during global and cultural crisis that we would never have expected; thanks to ongoing supply shortages and the long-overdue revolution of a workforce tired of being exploited – gone are the days when you can order an item or step into a store and assume that it will be available at whim. Inflation is rapidly changing our financial expectations. Anyone who has traveled recently knows that we do well to hold travel plans loosely. Justin and Andrea took a vacation/scouting trip last summer where not.one.single.planned task or event went as intended. Not one. Coming home early was definitely discussed but it got to a point where it was downright comical how predictable it became that whatever we planned would fall through or be delayed in an endless variety of ways. Experiences like this have made it very difficult for many of us to generate motivation for specific goals or plans. I have said many times out loud that without a vision, the people perish.
What happens when we have no feasible vision for the future; when our days are a series of unfortunate dynamics – both globally and domestically? We become focused on the negative, the unpredictability, the instability, the worries of what’s next?. Problem is, the science of neurology tells us that we move toward what we ruminate on. I find that we so often focus on what is not as we would like or what we don’t want in our lives: I need to stop doing [insert dysfunction here]. The problem is, this thing we don’t want is the mental ‘vision’ before us and though we are running from it, we somehow find ourselves entangled in it. That’s because we must decide what behavior or thought we want to replace it with. What need is that dysfunction trying to meet? How can we meet that need in a healthier way? Time and time again, in my own life and in the lives of clients, success is finally achieved when we stop worrying about the thing we don’t want and focus on it’s desirable replacement instead! So, for example – instead of saying, why bother making plans – it will all fall apart anyway, we ask ourselves, what character quality do I want to cultivate in myself? and focus on the steps required to do so.
It is this understanding of the importance of focusing our brains on what we value that inspired me to launch a vision-boarding quest as we close out the year. The reality is, life is not settling back into ‘predictability’ anytime soon. The overdue bills from corporate greed and environmental abuse are coming due. War is brewing in a world that no longer has the luxury of dissociating from conflict in other hemispheres. Now, more than ever, we must develop the ability to focus our minds on possibility and values if we are to avoid throwing our hands up in defeat. I want to facilitate a fun-filled process of identifying what matters to each of us in this season and create together, a visual representation to which we can refer, throughout the next year.
Vision boards have been used for all sorts of goals: professional accomplishments, material possessions, travel wishes, physical milestones, etc. For the past several years, I have used vision boards to illustrate a value or concept that I believe God is emphasizing in my life at that time. As we take this journey together, you decide how you want to use the process. Is there a physical activity you want to train for? A goal you want to reach for at work? A place you want to visit? A value or characteristic you want to cultivate in your life? I will encourage you to distill the desires of your heart down to what is stable – what endures despite the unpredictability of our world.
Each week in November, I will post prompting questions on Facebook and Instagram, to help you tune in to where your heart is now and what matters most to you moving into the new year. I will offer general prompts as well as additional questions that invite a faith perspective to the process if that is of interest to you. Use these prompts to journal and reflect, building a vision that is authentic to you but durable in the face of uncertainty. These posts will show up in our stories as well as timeline on both platforms. On Instagram, I’ll create a Vision highlight for our stories so that this can be used anytime in the future.
In early December, I may host vision-boarding events, online or in person, (depending on interest), where we will make our boards together.
We are starting a new blog post series focused on those who would like to pursue becoming a therapist. The plan is to breakdown important questions to not only ask your future graduate school, but to ask yourself.