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Having visual reminders of your goals, dreams, and aspirations helps keep you focused on what’s important to you.
Throughout life’s daily crises, stresses, and distractions, visual reminders can help you remember the big picture. They can help you overcome challenges and move forward each day toward achieving the life you truly desire.
Knowing that you’re always moving forward brings a confident, peaceful feeling. You’re sure that, no matter what life brings your way, you will achieve the success you crave. This feeling is an awesome motivator to keep you going even when the chips are down, and visuals can help you get it.
Try these 3 ways to use visuals as a means of achieving your goals:
1. Sticky note reminders. This simple method puts your goals and motivators at the forefront. Buy colorful sticky notes and fun colored pens and commit your goals to paper. Stick these notes so you can see and think about them often.
- Place notes on your bathroom mirror, the ceiling above your bed, the refrigerator door, on your favorite coffee mug or right on the bottom of your computer monitor. Any place that you’re likely to glance throughout the day is a good destination for a motivating, goal-setting note. I keep my vision board right above my computer monitor so I can easily see it.
- Make your notes specific, “I want grow my community by 5 people today using helpful social media posts,” or broad but motivating, “Today will be a productive and motivating day. I’m going to make it happen!” These sticky notes will encourage productivity throughout the day with simple, basic visuals.
2. Index or note cards. Buy a stack of index/note cards and commit a goal or aspiration to each one. Decorate them, write notes on them, and otherwise customize them to suit your needs. Keep them in your pocket, purse or car and refer to them daily as a means of motivating yourself to achieve your goals and dreams.
- When you refer to the same note cards on a daily basis, a habit forms. It is said that 21 days of repeating a task will ingrain it in you. Check your note cards daily until it becomes a habit, and it will become a vital tool in helping you achieve your goals.
- Include the feeling you’ll have when you achieve your goal as part of the goal. For example, “It’s December 31st and I’m excited to have reached my revenue goal of $XXX for this year.”
3. Visual mind maps. This tool will help you organize your goals in a highly visual way. Create a mind map on a large sheet of poster board. Designate an area for each long-term goal, and add an image and a small amount of text. Create a cloud of medium and long-term goals around each long-term goal, with lines connecting them to the long-term focus.
- Use images, colors, words, and other meaningful visuals to decorate your poster. Draw your own graphics, clip pictures from magazines, or download images from the internet to create a colorful — and visually appealing — goal-oriented mind map.
- Put time and effort into the creation of your visual mind map, and then put it in a place where you’ll see it daily. This visual will help you keep your short, medium, and long term goals in mind and will consistently remind you of what you want to be focusing on.
Visual reminders of your goals are extremely beneficial in helping you achieve your dreams and aspirations. These reminders are easy to see on a daily basis, helping you recall your most important goals early on and throughout the day.
A quick trip to the store and a few hours of fun will have you achieving your goals in no time. Have children? Include them in the process. 🙂