Today I spoke to the material management people about having a vison board or as Cristi calls it, a dream board. Here is what I told them.
Daniel and I celebrated the new year with a bottle of sparkling apple-pomegranate juice. We were home alone welcoming the new year, just the two of us which reminded me of a jazz song by Grover Washington Jr. “just the two of us” I can hear the tune in my head…just the two of us, we can make it if we try, just the two of us…
As we entered into the new year, I realized that an important thing to do to kick-start our 2019 year properly is to write down a list of goals that we plan to accomplish this year if you try just like the song says.
Think for a moment of the goals you want to make for 2019 and put them in writing.
Now I will share with you what my goals for 2019:
I started mine with wanting to improve my relationship with Daniel which is wonderful but there is always room for improvement. I plan to attend the temple as a couple each week on a more consistent basis and to travel and explore this beautiful country we are blessed to live in. We consciously need to make the effort to go on dates regularly and to see at least one new place each month while we still live in the Philippines.
Next, to improve my relationship with my Heavenly Father and His son, Jesus Christ. I can’t think of one without the other. I wrote two things I will do better this year. One, my personal prayers are going to be more meaningful and specific than just saying familiar phrases and two, I will set a time each morning to listen to one of the conference talks as I do chores around the house or go for a walk and at night before going to bed read the scriptures.
Next I want to be closer to all our children, grandchildren and extended family. For this goal, I will continue writing the Monday later to our family and to FaceTime each week and do more messaging and texting. We are also planning a three- day family reunion starting July 24 to July 27, 2019.
Next I want to do more family history remembering those who have passed and write more stories about my grandmother, my parents and some about myself.
Next I want to keep serving as much as I can as a Pathway missionary.
Next I want to also exercise each day and eat healthy to lose the extra weight I have been caring for years. Those were doctor’s orders and we need to take his advice more seriously.
Next I want to practice piano since I have a beautiful piano at home and it’s a shame that I never was disciplined enough to practice as a child.
Next I want to continue learning something new like knitting.
Next I will continue running my rental business, getting out of debt and investing when an opportunity comes available.
Next I will write my novel based on a true story.
Last but not least, I want to do all those things we have been asked to do by our leaders. I want to be the best ministering person I can be. That includes being a good ministering wife, daughter, mother, grandmother, mother in law sister and friend but nothing like that will happen unless I make a visual poster.
There is a very successful business woman who was interviewed about her secret to success, she said the following: “I LOVE the start of a new year. It gives us all a fresh clean slate to start with and we can make this year ahead WHATEVER we want it to be.
It’s as if we are all starting a new chapter of our lives titled “2019” and we each get to decide what this chapter of ours is going to entail.
What goals will you accomplish?
What changes will you make?
In what ways are you going to improve?
What talents will you develop?
What adventures will you embark on?
There are so many exciting things to plan for this year ahead!
This might sound cliché but it is 100% truth that if you write down your goals you have a MUCH higher chance of accomplishing them. And if you take it one step further and find visual pictures of those goals and put them on a Goal Poster it is almost guaranteed that you will end up accomplishing them. Having the visuals makes a huge difference. Every time I do a goal poster of visual images of my goals I end up accomplishing them – no kidding around – it truly works!!! TRY IT!” Amy Anderson
A daughter Cristi wrote about it on her blog two years ago by saying:
“Dare to Dream. Ever since I can remember I would dream about what I wanted in life to look like…where I wanted to be…and what I wanted to feel like. No wonder New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. The anticipation and celebration of the year past along with the new year to come… I love it. It’s fresh start. A clean slate. I can dream up whatever I want. But I have to be honest… at times my dreams feel larger than life and I get scared about writing down these dreams due to fear of not accomplishing them… now stop procrastinating and hiding what you really want and get those dreams and goals down on paper. Statistics have reported that a person has a higher chance of accomplishing their goals if they write them down. But I like to go even deeper than writing them down in words. I believe in the power of creating a vision board or in my case a “dream board” It not only speaks to the mind but it speaks to the heart. Who wants to get started in dreaming with me?
Here is what you need: Magazines, paper, scissors and glue.
Step 1:Find a quiet time when you can reflect.
Step 2:Ponder.Analyze your different roles and parts of your life that are important to you and write them out so you can see them.
Step 3:Dream. Close your eyes and go through each category and visualize what your ideal would be in each category. What does that look like for you? What does it feel like? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? What does it taste like? Then write down that come to mind in describing each area. For instance, I wrote the role of being a wife, when I envisioned my relationship with my husband, I want a partnership. I felt us being in sync and on the same page when it comes to parenting our children and heard us having weekly meetings and pillow talks about our life. I felt us being strong, unbreakable. I envisioned us willingness to serve one another and could smell the dinners I prepared for him and tasted the popcorn or ice-cream on our weekly dates. I felt his embrace and saw us flirting and heard a lot of laughter. This is my ideal- why not seek after it?”
Step 4:Set your intention.Now that you have identified the areas of your life. Choose the areas that you want to focus on first for the year and intentionally be working on.
Step 5:Browse through magazines and find images that speak to you.
Step 6:Begin to place the images on the page and glue them down.
Step 7:Set an action item for each category.
Step 8:Hang it where you can see it and revisit it often. “
Our daughter Bianca wrote about an experience she had many years ago when she took a marriage class offered by our Church leaders she remembers that in one of the lessons the teacher took a big black marker and wrote on the board service + sacrifice = love. She was 21, newly married and has never forgotten that equation. To end, I want to share the parable of the spoon with you. It reads:
THE PARABLE OF THE SPOON
There were two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of stew. It smelled delicious but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
In contrast, behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.
The man said, “I don’t understand.”
God smiled. “It is simple,” He said, “Love only requires one skill. These people learned early to feed one another. Those who are hungry are greedy people, and they think only of themselves.
I concluded saying: I believe that if there is anything I want you to remember from anything that I said today is to minister to each other as husband and wife in doing small acts of service every day because I feel that Marriage is spell ministering to each other and if there is any one goal for the year we need to do is to minister to the most important person in our life.
Con amor,
Vero
