Every year about this time I wonder what the future will bring in the year ahead. Since I’m rather left-brain dominant, I also like to plan and be a co-creator of my life.
This year I’ve been reading a lot of Byron Katie books. I find her process of The Work to be so helpful in dismantle thoughts that create unnecessary suffering. She seems to be a believer that reality is always good, and we need to make friends with it. She doesn’t seem to do a lot of planning or worrying about the future. She lets life live her every day.
My sense is that people like Byron Katie live almost completely out of the right side of their brain, which is the part of each of us that creates our sense of connection with all that is. I respect a free flowing way of approaching life, but my belief system is a bit different.
I believe we’re meant to co-create with life, not just accept whatever comes our way. There is much we can’t control, like a global pandemic, our eventual death, or cats.
My view is that we have the gift of affecting the future by our choice, our thoughts and how we cultivate our energy and mindfulness.
This is why I hold a planning workshop each December for whomever feels the call or inclination to work with me that given year.
My intuition has been telling me that the pandemic that began in 2020 was the beginning of an earth renaissance. I wonder if we needed a collective jolt to become more mindful in many, many ways.
My sense is that by the end of 2022, the pandemic will have done its job and awakened at least some of us to a need to live differently.
I’m offering a workshop on creating action boards and prosperity maps this December because the time for taking new types of action will be available to us soon. Maybe even now.
There are 4 types of visual action plans I recommend that you consider creating for next year depending on what feels most important for you in 2022.
- Results
- This is the closest to a vision board in some ways, because it shows what you want, but with pictures and words of action. In business, this might be a Gantt chart or tracking graphs. As individual, we might follow a particular goal that matters most now. Often we need a pushing energy to make this board move from plan to reality.
- Focus Areas
- This is an action board focusing on different aspects of life, which is an approach life coaches often recommend. If you pull together images that appeal to you without much thought, you might naturally create a focus area board. The challenge with this kind of planning is that you can get pulled in many directions.
- Mastery
- You might create one or more boards for different aspects of your life where you want to create more mastery. For 2022, wealth and writing are two mastery boards I’m creating that I will demonstrate how to create in both a digital and 3-D format at the planning workshop on December 12th. Most of us can benefit from mastery mapping and plans.
- Visualization
- You can use any action board with visualization, but this type of board or map or plan is created to be used on a regular basis for reinforcing a particular goal or state of being. During 2020, several of us created Sea of Prosperity maps that we used to help us maintain a state of optimism during the pandemic. We’ll be looking at examples of that map on Sunday.
Using Canva, I will show you how you can update any of the digital action board templates into something personal and easy to use as you move through 2022.
You obviously don’t need to create action boards or maps to plan or move in a new direction in 2022. Yet, my experience is that positive visual representations of your goals can increase the ease and speed fo creative positive changes.
However, it is possible to create action boards that are a disruption or even an impediment to positive growth.
Any kind of visual board can be a problem when we’re pursuing goals that are superficial, out of alignment with our highest good, or represent someone else’s or society’s goals for us.
This is why we’ll be doing a centering Shamata meditation at the beginning of our workshop. I recommend that you do pause and meditate before you begin an action board.
It’s easy to compare our genuine goals and aspirations to others and think we should think bigger or conversely limit what is possible.
In the coaching world, it’s often said that most of us overestimate what can be accomplished in the short-term and underestimate what can be accomplished in the long-term.
Steady consistent action is beneficial for us most of the time. This is what action maps at their best can help you to take.
If you’re ready to create a different type of 2022 for yourself, action mapping can be a powerful tool for transformation for you.
For anyone wanting to go deeper with this material and receive digital templates for each of these types of action boards/maps, join me on this Sunday, December 12, 2021 at 1pm CST and sign up on Eventbrite. The workshop is limited to 30 people so that there is time to ask questions and get some individual attention from me.
P.S. As part of the holiday season, I’m giving away 3 prizes of $25 gift cards. The drawing will be held at the end of the workshop, and if you’re a winner, you will receive your link that afternoon.
Mindful Earthkeeper 