Dreams & Gratitude

Last month I decided to follow some Rachel Hollis advice.  I followed her 10-10-1 plan.   What does the best version of you look like in 10 years?  What are 10 dreams that need to come true in order for that to be a reality?  What is 1 goal that you can work on to make your dreams come true?  I also decided to write down 10 things I was grateful for each day.

While I'm not going to type out my in 10 years, I will share with you the 10 dreams that I wrote down each day as well as what goal I worked on this month & 10 of the things I was grateful for.

10 Things I'm Grateful For

1) Getting my car fixed fast & cheap

2) Getting gas station tacos & DQ w/Ryan

3) Getting a picture of Nash in Bluebonnets

4) Getting to drive myself to the softball game

5) Eric Church concert

6) Catching up on grading

7) Going to Houston for a weekend

8) Getting almost 9 hours of sleep

9) Getting to see girls I coached as freshmen, play in a playoff game as seniors
10) Getting a new manicure

10 Dreams

1)I have no student loan/credit card debt

2)I don't have to take daily prescription pills

3)I live in XXX (Houston area)

4)I am married

5)I have 3 children

6)I exercise 5 times/week

7)I have $10,000 in savings

8)I enjoy my career

9)I get massages monthly

10)I go on vacation 2 times/year

1 Goal

30 active minutes every day for 30 days
(This is still my goal.  I'm trying to get 30 minutes for 30 days straight.  So every time I have a day where I don't get 30 min in I go back to 0)

5 Tips For Reaching Your Goals

Happy Friday!  I hope that this week treated you well & that you have a fantastic weekend!

This coming Sunday is "Make Your Dreams Come True" Day.  I'm obviously all about that with my new approach to 2019!  On Wednesday I posted my vision board, which for the record, the day after I made it & a few hours after posting it, one partially came true!  BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE VISION BOARD!

So without further ado, here are 5 tips to help you reach those goals!

1. Make SMART goals
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely

2. Be true to YOU
Set goals because YOU want to achieve them.  Not because it's what you think would make others happy or because it's what society expects from you.

3. Know your WHY
You need to know WHY the goal is important to you & WHY you want to accomplish it.  If you don't know why it's important to you, you're not likely to achieve it.

4. Track your performace
Whether that's daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you.  Keep track of your progress.  Seeing how far you've come already is great motivation to keep you going.

5. Celebrate!
No matter what the end goal is, & no matter how small you think your achievement is, celebrate it!  Say your goal is to run a 5k & you haven't run in years, or ever!  Celebrate that first solid minute of running!  Heck, celebrate the first time you lace up your tennis shoes & get to it!  Be proud of your accomplishments & keep doin the damn thing!

Manifesting Your Dreams in 2019 With a Vision Board

Something that I've always love, but never actually done because my crafting skills are usually at about nil, is the idea of a Vision Board.

Blame it on all of the personal development books I've been listening to, I decided that this was going to be the year that I made one.  So I sat down & started planning out my blog content for the year, & since my first month is about transforming my mindset, and because it's the first month of the year, talking about Vision Boards seemed like a good topic to be one of the first to hit the blog.  Wouldn't you know it there was soon a training that popped up in one of the coaching groups that I belong to so I watched it & took some notes.  I already had last week's blog posts completed so I plugged "vision board" into today's slot on my spreadsheet.  Then guess what happened??  At the end of last week a "vision board creation party" was created for last night in that same coaching group!  Perfect timing!  As a group we wrote out our major goals for the year & started in on creating our vision boards.  Look at that, manifesting my goals already!

So how do you make a vision board?  Well there are lots of options!

Write down your goals

We spent about 10 minutes just listing out what we wanted to happen this year.  Remember to DREAM BIG!  Possible topics to consider:

-Career

-Finances

-Family

-Faith

-Health

-Relationships

Make them measurable

Don't just say "I want to lose weight."  How much do you want to lose & by when?  Once you've figured out your broad goals, write down a measurable amount & time frame.

Choose if you want it to be physical or digital

1. Some people to get out their craft materials & get to work making a physical one. 
That's not me though.  Partly because I don't have magazines or a printer at home & I'm not about to run out & buy that plus the glue & fun things just to make one.

2. Or make one digitally which is what I did.  I got on Canva & used my free account to make my collage.  I used the Blog Banner template but you can use whatever makes your heart happy.

Get to creating!

Once you have your goals written down, you've made them measurable, & you've decided what you want your vision board to look like, it's time to get to work.  No two vision boards are going to look the same... and they shouldn't!  Also, don't worry if it's not "pretty."  I'll share mine in a hot second but I can promise you it's nothing to write home about.  With time they'll get better & better looking.  Unless you're just a crafting/graphic design rock star in which case I'm sure your first one will be gorgeous!

Put it somewhere you'll see it ALL. THE. TIME!

If you're making a physical one, hang it up on the wall!  In your bathroom, your bedroom, somewhere you're going to see it every day!

If you're making a digital one, make it your phone or computer background!

I'm going to be getting mine printed out in color & attaching it to the cork board part of my calendar I look at daily in my kitchen,

So what did mind wind up looking like??

In case you can't read it:

-Move back to MN (June)

-Be a Diamond coach by Summit (July)

-Pay off credit card debt (Dec)

-Find a healthy/mature long-term relationship (June-Dec)

-Visit a place I've never been (Dec)

-Finish Transform 20 & 80 Day Obsession (June)

-Get out of the classroom (Sep)

-Get a place with a yard for Nash (June-Dec)

-Get my case study published (Dec)

Have you ever made a vision board before?  Where do you put yours?

Once Upon A Dream

Have you ever had reoccurring dreams?  Or dreams that just stick with you for days, months, years?  I'm sure if I thought real hard I could recall more, but there are 3 that stick out in my mind.  I had a dream Sunday morning that left me wide awake before 7 am which is what inspired this post.  Not that I see myself forgetting it anytime soon but I wanted to write it out & at some point possibly go see someone about it.  I'll write about that one last since it's the most recent.

One

I haven't had this dream in FOREVER.  As a child however I had it relatively frequently.  Sometimes I got further in the dream than others but it was always the same concept.  I would be at zoo, however not a zoo like you're probably thinking with elephants & giraffes, this one had dinosaurs.  Think the Flintstones.  I would always be wandering around the zoo but no one else was ever there except maybe my parents.  It always ended the same way, I would fall into a pit where there were other dinosaurs (as I type this I'm now thinking about the whole gorilla debacle...) Anyway, a majority of the time I would wake up as I was falling.  Only once or twice did I ever stay asleep & actually make it to the bottom.  I couldn't tell you what kind of dinosaurs were down there anymore, & I couldn't tell you when exactly I stopped having that dream, but I remember having that same dream multiple times as a child.

Two

For those of you who have been around for a little while you may remember Mr. Oklahoma.  Last June was the last time I saw him.  I don't recall if I ever really told that story or not but essentially he walked out of the hotel room the night he left saying he wasn't going to give up on us & all of this other crap.  I spent most of the summer in a limbo of letting go & holding on.  By the end of the summer I had given up.  

However, during the summer I had a dream about him.  In the dream he called me after an extended period of time (I'm not sure how much time had supposedly passed in the dream) telling me that he loved me, missed me, & was trying to tell me all of this stuff to prove it to me.

Fast forward to this past September, nearly 3.5 months since I had last seen or heard from him.  He called.  I was asleep & for some reason I woke up (my phone was on silent) & I noticed that he was calling.  At first I thought I was dreaming but then when I realized I wasn't I picked up the phone & there he was on the other end.  On the other end of the phone he sat there telling me that he loved me, missed me, thought about me all the time, that I made him the happiest, that he wished that he could be with me but life was complicated.

(For the record that was the last time I ever heard from him...I had also debated texting him that morning but decided not to since I hadn't heard from him in so long & then BOOM)

Three

Saturday night I was staying in Kansas City on my way back to Minnesota.  At approximately 6:45 in the morning I woke up with my heart pounding & my mind racing.

In my dream it was graduation day for the high school I taught at (Saturday actually was their graduation day) & a bunch of the teachers that I worked with were going but I hadn't planned on it.  In the dream teachers were supposed to announce different students but it wasn't just seniors, it was based on the social studies class they had just taken.  Ultimately I decided to go but when I got there it was no longer the school I worked at or the teachers I worked with...it was people that I went to high school with.  I ran into a couple of girls that I graduated with & started talking to them & we all agreed to sit together.  They were talking about the ceremony when all of a sudden I feel this arm around me.  I assumed it was a guy that had graduated a year before me because we had dinner plans that night.  The guy says "Hey! How are you?"  As he's talking with his arm still around me we start sitting down & I start turning towards him.  All I could do was stare.  I knew who it was but it wasn't registering right in my brain.  Even in my dream it seemed impossible.  The person that had their arm around me was a guy that we had graduated with but had killed himself back in 2008/2009.  Even in my dream he wasn't supposed to be alive.  He just said it's really good to see you again & laughed as I started to scream & he disappeared as I woke up.

And now I can't stop thinking about that dream.

Have any of you had reoccurring dreams? Or dreams that came true?  Or dreams of people that have passed on?