Creating 2020 Vision: How to Get Clear, Set Goals and Create a Life You Love

When you have 2020 vision, you have clarity, direction, purpose and this creates a strong focused mindset. If you are ready to see what you want clearly and prepare yourself to remain motivated, inspired and truly live your vision, stay tuned all throughout this year! We are going to get motivated and stay motivated with a constant search for and connection to clarity.

This post today will walk you through three basic steps to create 2020 vision for your year ahead—the year 2020! First you will use clarity questions to dive deep within yourself and get super clear on where you’ve come from through reflecting on this past year. Then you will set specific goals to set you up to move towards what you want. Lastly you will create a life you love through consistent action and maintaining a determined mindset. Ready to get started? Here we go!

Step One: How to Get Clear

Clarity requires self-reflection. Inner reflection can be painful, or at least uncomfortable…so we tend to either avoid it through procrastination, busyness or through plain old denial. If you can reframe the process of self-reflection from painful or uncomfortable to a process of getting super clear on what hasn’t worked so far, so that you can make adjustments and create a plan for change, you might actually enjoy the process!

Getting clear is not about regret, self-deprecation, self-punishment or anything else that feels negative. Self-reflection and getting super clear in order to allow yourself to problem solve and use those solutions to move forward in a way that creates feelings of empowerment and deep self-awareness. Take time with these self-reflection questions to dive deep and GET CLEAR! Get out your journal, set your ego and fear aside and gain the clarity through self-reflection that you can learn and grow from to make 2020 your most purpose driven and powerful year yet.

1.    What was the most memorable part of this past year? Why?

2.    What is the biggest lesson you learned this past year? How can you apply that lesson to the year ahead?

3.    In what ways have you changed over this past year? Are you satisfied with that change, why or why not?

4.    If you did not create the change you desire in the past year, why? What held you back?

5.    What were your biggest distractions in this past year? How can you adjust those in the year ahead?

6. What did you prioritize over the past year? Did you prioritize yourself and your personal goals?

7.    When you reflect on this past year, what are you most grateful for?

8.    What is one area of your life that you’d most like to improve upon in the year ahead?

9. How will you ensure that you make these improvements that you desire?

10. What are the challenges that may present themselves as you attempt to create these improvements?

Spend time reflecting on your answers and then move into the next step.

Step Two: Setting Goals

When you set goals, you want them to be measurable, doable and desirable. If you can measure your progress you will know when you’ve achieved your goal. When your goal is doable, it will be something that you can fit into your current schedule and lifestyle without any major disruption. And the big kicker is, your goal has to be desirable—meaning you have to actually want it. When you know what you want (goal) and begin to create a plan for making it happen (doable) you can remain focused on why you want it (desirable) to ensure that you make it happen.

The biggest element of follow through is creating small action steps. When you have the baby steps outlined that will lead you to the bigger outcome of achieving your goal, you can get there. This leads us to step three!

Step Three: Create a Life You Love Through Consistent Action and a Determined Mindset

Taking action consistently is how you will ensure that you meet your goals and live out your vision for your life. Without a plan to take action it will most likely remain a dream, a fantasy, a simple wish. With a plan that you commit to taking action on consistently, your vision will fall into place with time. When you have a determined mindset that you have to do these action steps daily, you can do these action steps, that you WILL do these action steps NO MATTER WHAT, you will make it happen.

I know this is all easy to talk about however putting the plan together and creating consistent action is not always so simple...Over the next ten blogs, I’ll be outlining TEN steps to help create the change you desire over time and through a series of supportive suggestions that will help you create a life that you love. When it comes to living your vision, it is ultimately YOU that has to make the choice and the daily consistent work to make it happen. The 10-steps will offer the support to help get you where you want to go and continue to create clear vision for 2020!

I hope these three steps are helpful in your search for greatness this year. If you struggle to stay motivated feel free to reach out, having support is an essential element to growth!

Growing Your Inner Strengths to Transform Your Life

Now that we’ve covered the six primary inner strengths, it’s time to integrate them into the fabric of our being so we are more able to live in a space of happiness, contentment and peacefulness. Let’s examine how to use these six inner strengths to help grow out of and overcome our weaknesses. 

Growing internal strengths is work—l mean, sometimes really hard work. Growing inner strength requires self-awareness, a desire to change, and putting in effort consistently to make it happen. Let’s face it, change is hard, demanding and often painful. However, is change even more painful than living in space of discomfort, avoidance and struggle? What is the real cost to you within your life to NOT change? If you desire to transform your life, change is necessary.

Of these six inner strengths (remember that there are a whole lot of other inner strengths—these are just the primary ones that I’ve focused on over the last several posts), did any stand out to you that you’d like to build? Did you notice if each already exist within your being and how you approach your life? I know the desire to possess each of them is strong for me, however, I did notice how some of them were not as super solid within me as I applied them to myself! One of the ways that I most live within my personal authenticity is when I am practicing self care and growing on all levels. Examining these inner strengths made me come face to face with how complacent I can be with my weaknesses—which then causes me to not live within my authenticity—yikes! An opportunity to grow is exciting and scary at the same time, right? 

Spend some time examining your current life a bit. Reflect on the following thought questions and journal out your answers if you like:

• Where do you hold yourself back from your dreams?

• If you applied these inner strengths to how you approach your relationship with food, what did you notice in relation to each of the strengths and how they could help improve this relationship?

• Where do you feel the most struggle within your life?

• Where are you hiding or what are you hiding from?

• What limiting beliefs do you hold onto about yourself and/or your life?

When you allow yourself to really answer these questions, you will find valuable information about where you are ready to grow and evolve into you…only better! This is where your true self is longing to level-up, to create greater consciousness. When you do this, you first will go through the temporary discomfort of stepping out of your comfort zone. Once you pass this temporary discomfort, you are able to experience the freedom of living within the authenticity of your true self and ultimately create more comfort and pleasure.

Begin by selecting one area within yourself that you might consider to be a weakness. One of my primary weakness—as I perceive it anyway—is impatience…(my husband verified this for me.) Then determine which inner strength would help to manage that weakness and ultimately build it into an inner strength. For me, in order to help improve my impatience, I’d like to build temperance (along with all of the others!) Check within yourself and go into any areas where you might avoid noticing your perceived weakness(es). Awareness is always the first step!

Just as a reminder, the six inner strengths we’ve been exploring are:

1.    Curiosity: Allowing continued growth of knowledge and wisdom

2.    Vitality: Allowing continued growth of courage as well as mind & body wellbeing

3.    Giving and Receiving Love: Allowing continued growth of love, trust, openness and affirmation for yourself and others 

4.    Temperance: Allowing continued growth of acceptance, forgiveness & compassion

5.    Gratitude: Allowing for continued growth to release the state of wanting and desire and creating a grateful perspective that what you have is enough. This creates transcendence and deeply releases anxiety.

6.    Hope & Faith: An inner belief that all will be well without having to control your circumstances. This is the experience of surrender, which is deeply personal and spiritual.

Once you’ve selected one area that needs work (identified a weakness)—and one area to build (identified useful inner strength)—let yourself dive into it. Spend time in reflection about your perception of your weakness and how growing this particular inner strength can help to improve your internal experience and your interaction within your own life. Spend time journaling and talking to others about their perceptions of you (yes, get some—at times hard to hear—feedback!) Begin incorporating daily practices to build this particular inner strength starting today. Give yourself time. Be patient (note to self!) and allow yourself to grow with effort, determination and a focus on why you want to create this strength within.

How will you know when the inner strength has become integrated? It will become evident to you in how you communicate with yourself and others, the choices you make and how others respond to you. Leveling up your consciousness and your life is a lifelong journey and worth the effort. You always have the choice to change or remain right where you are…what will you choose?

Inner Strength Focus: Gratitude to Heal Emotional Eating

Gratitude is an inner strength that is often present in those who feel happy and content within their lives. While gratitude is a strength, it is also a practice, a way of being, and an attitude that can be cultivated over time. The act of being and feeling grateful is powerful. Right now, take a moment to think of one thing you are grateful for and notice how it makes you feel to bring this to your mind. Did you smile? Did you feel any warmth in your heart and body expand? Gratitude gets a lot of press these days and while taking a moment just to be grateful is wonderful, it is the practice and cultivation of it as a deeper strength and inner resource that allows it to enhance your life through your attitude and outlook every single day.

As you engage in the practice of being grateful daily, you begin to harness the power of gratitude as an inner strength. While that may sound like a nice skill, it is not necessarily easy. We are hardwired to remember danger, to notice possible problems and remember them for future security and survival. The problems and unpleasant experiences can conjure up discomfort and fear in a heartbeat but we tend to forget the positive experiences more easily. The part of the brain that is always on alert for danger does this on purpose as a survival mechanism. The part of the brain that stores the good stuff does not let it all sink in quite so easily which means that we have to work at it to make the good stuff stick!

Practicing is an act of creation. We get better at what we practice, so if you have been practicing fear and lacking thoughts, you might be really good at that. The good news is that if you begin practicing gratitude, you can get good at that too. Gratitude is one of the best anecdotes for anxiety. Anxiety is loaded with fear of the unknown and tends to create catastrophes based on all of the possible dangers that the brain has stored and this causes a lot of internal distress. One of the most commonly soothed emotions with food is anxiety. Food can be calming and grounding, and when you are feeling anxious it can do the trick. Sugary foods can trigger the pleasure center in the brain making you temporarily feel less anxious. However, this is not a very effective coping mechanism as the anxiety will not just go away, it is just temporarily numbed out by the food.

Gratitude can calm and release anxiety because it brings you back to being grateful for what is true right now, what you do have, and what is going well. This is mindfulness in action with a specific attitude. Anxiety lives in future catastrophe while gratitude lives in the present moment. When you bring the energy of gratitude to the present moment it can transform the moment and create an amazing shift in perception causing your inner experience to transform.

When you apply the inner strength of gratitude to the process of making peace with food it is incredibly powerful. When we are along any personal healing journey there will be trials, there will be ups and downs and of course there will always be the inevitable backsliding. When you apply gratitude to your journey it allows you to focus on what is going well, where you are being successful and an ability to tap into the inner knowing that all will be well.

When you focus on what has gone wrong or on where you weren’t perfect, you create a dampening of energy and may even think to yourself, “why do I even bother trying?” or you may think thoughts such as, “I always fail, I’m weak…” These are defeating, self-limiting beliefs that have absolutely no use or purpose along the path to healing and wellbeing. When you focus on what has gone well you reinforce the belief that what you want is indeed possible and on the way. Most importantly, when you reflect on what went well and what you are grateful for, you are able to build energy to keep going, to keep moving forward. You know that it feels good to feel good, it feels good to make progress, it feels good to heal and grow into the healthiest and most whole version of yourself over and over again.

Gratitude is a practice, you have to do it over and over again for it to be effective and to truly sink in as an inner strength. Gratitude is also an attitude. It is a mindset of looking for what is good, what you do have, what feels positive and to continue to search for it even when it may be difficult to find. When you engage in the practice of gratitude and work to intentionally create a mindset of recognizing what you are grateful for and shift away from longing and wanting you grow the inner strength of gratitude as an integrated part of who you are, a resource you can draw from over and over again.

This week, begin to integrate these practices in order to grow the inner strength of gratitude within you each day.

1.    Keep a gratitude journal. Focus at the end of the day on two things you did that moved you in the direction of your own personal healing and wellbeing journey and write it like this: Today I am grateful that I…__________________ (took a long walk, drank a ton of water, took a yoga class, ate a leafy green, meditated…) just be sure to focus on what you did do. Then write, I am grateful that I created the opportunity to feel __________________ by doing ______________ (strong, relaxed, empowered, healthy, vibrant…. By doing yoga, meditating, eating a leafy green….)

2.    Tell someone you care about something you appreciate about them every day.

3.    Be grateful for the food you eat, don’t judge it, just practice gratitude.

4. Begin each day by saying Thank You.

If you try these four action steps, let me know the impact they create in your life—especially in relation to your relationship with food.