In January like most people I made goals for myself and placed them on a vision board. I have had decent results using a vision board before but this year I wanted to do better. It took me almost a month to complete my vision board this time around because not only did I have to make myself goals, I pushed myself to also make action steps for each goal. I even told myself that these were not goals I was making but affirmations for my life that I wanted to speak over myself. Since I have been an educator for a few years shy of a decade I am familiar with making smart goals, so I always break my goals into categories such as career, health, or financial before getting specific about them, so I can measure if I have reached it and then set a deadline for completion. Well it’s summer and the year is halfway over, so I decided to see if I was sticking to these goals and affirmations I set for myself. Well first I looked at my vision board and thought “oh no” what have I been doing with my life! The thing with vision boards are that they don’t spell out your goals and timelines or the action steps you have chosen to get there. You may also not have everything on your vision board you want to carry out because you couldn’t find a visual that fit. Thankfully before I even create my vision boards each year I use a journal which I affectionately call my “GOD Did It “Journal to write down goals, actions steps, and notes of gratitude once I achieve something. When I went through my journal I looked at each category of goals and realized I have been crushing it in the career section! I can say that my career was my biggest focus of the year and probably caused me the most stress, and I was relieved to see that I was on track in that area. Then I had to reflect on all the goals that had taken a back seat these first six months if I was going to do majority of what I set out for myself. For this last half of the year I want to put my spiritual and financial goals first since they tie closely together. With my mind set on achieving these other goals I set for myself I will have to buckle down and actually complete the action steps I chose. If you are reflecting on how you are doing so far this year, don’t beat yourself up because you haven’t checked everything off yet but push yourself to get closer to the vision you mapped out for your life. Remember life is the greatest love story ever written so write it out and start living!