Creating a Personal Guide Map
“One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” – Brené Brown
The beginning of a new year is a great time to celebrate for a couple of reasons. First, we can look back at the prior year and reflect on all the things we achieved and how much progress we made along our journey. Even though we may have faced challenges along the way, my guess is that there are many things – big or small – that you can point to that helped you grow throughout the year.
And second, we now have a whole new year for which we can plan and set our intentions, which is our theme for the month of January. At Courage to Caregivers, we encourage setting intentions rather than making resolutions for the new year. By setting intentions, we can focus on how we want to be or who we want to become. I admit that it might require some hard work – digging deep, looking within, and dreaming BIG – but it definitely helps us map our journey.
For example, at the start of 2023, my intention was to focus on being more present – how I wanted to BE vs. what I wanted to DO – more “being” and less “doing.” For 2024, my intentions include continuing to build on my progress of 2023 toward being the best version of ME that I can BE. As I’ve put a lot of personal things on hold because of my caregiving responsibilities recently, my goal for this year is to reclaim ME.
I invite you to go through the same process of mapping your journey by imagining who you want to be and become. One way to begin is to create a personal timeline to organize your experiences and see the progress you’ve already made toward your future goals. You can also consider creating a personal mission statement that, in just a few words, describes your values and goals, explains who you are, declares what is important to you, and charts where you want to go in life.
To summarize, here are three tools to help you map your journey:
DETERMINE YOUR CORE VALUES. What’s most important to you, and why? How do you want to be remembered?
FOLLOW YOUR VISION: Where do you want to GROW? What does “the best” look like for you?
MAKE A PLAN: It’s always a good idea to make a plan when heading out on a journey. SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based) are a great place to start!
And remember, although your journey and your personal timeline are unique to you, they can also help you set a great example for someone else, as noted in Brené Brown’s quote above. So, how will YOU tell YOUR story?