Visualization

I’m a big believer in visualizing my goals. I saw myself smiling and radiating with accomplishment at the top of Mount Whitney many, many times the night before I started the most difficult (physical) journey I’ve faced thus far and I made it.

Plenty of other factors contributed to this success, but visualization remains one of my favorite and so far successful techniques in accomplishing my goals. One way I make these visions more concrete in my brain is by creating a vision board. I’m sure this concept isn’t new to anyone and while I’ve been vaguely adding pins to my 2014 Pinterest Board, I realized I hadn’t created an actual vision board for myself since first moving to California. I knew I wanted to represent my goals visually, but what happens when you have several very different ideas of where your life should go?

When I was still living at home, I knew it was my goal to get to California. I knew I wanted a job, but that was mainly because I needed money to be in the place I wanted so desperately to be in. Now that I’ve been here for over a year, I feel like the career part is becoming slightly more important. Not just because I’ve been receiving troubling emails and texts about my bank account status, but because I want to feel like I’m making a difference and doing something worthwhile. I’ve toyed with many different scenarios for my next step–Going to grad school? Finding an office job? Continue nannying? Teaching? Volunteering? Moving back to Florida?

My lease ends the day before my 25th birthday which is just entirely appropriate. It’s amazing how different life was right before my 24th. I thought I had it all figured out–laughable really. All the things I felt secure in a year ago are irrelevant 10 months later. This grants me freedom, which is exhilarating and also completely terrifying. I have no idea what the best decision is and I vacillate daily, hourly even. Usually my vision board would contain very specific goals so I could see, smell, taste and feel them before they become a reality, but instead I focused on the things that will make me happy because that’s the important part, right?

Exploring, learning, traveling, creating, reading, writing, earning, contributing, being healthy and daring to take chances are all ways I can achieve my goals as vague as they might be. I hope that visualizing myself doing all the things I love will point me in the right direction and guide me to the path that will leave me and those around me fulfilled and joyful. I’ve approximately seven weeks to make some sort of decision, at least when it comes to living arrangements, so if I could get a few extra brains visualizing my successful decision making as well, it would be greatly appreciated.