Mid-Year Visioning In 3 Steps

Last month, I shared about my Reflection Hike - my mid-year/birthday tradition of looking over the past several months, celebrating wins, acknowledging challenges and how I’ve navigated them, and assessing what’s working and what’s not.

Today, I’d like to share the second part of my birthday tradition with you: My Dreaming Excursion.

Essentially, this involves taking myself out of my usual environment to craft a vision for the future - and, more specifically, for the second half of the year.

Before we walk through the three steps I engage for this process, let me share a couple of ‘setting the stage’ ideas with you:

• If possible, do your visioning on a different day than your reflection - or at least at a distinctly separate time (ie, reflection in the morning, visioning in the afternoon, with perhaps a lunch break or location change in between). Although you’ll take learnings from your reflection into consideration when visioning, I find it helpful to separate the two activities when I can.

• Find an inspiring setting. Step out of your office or where you typically spend your time, and let the change of scenery bring freshness to the process. I’ve done this at a picnic table near the lake, a nature center, a cute cafe; my recent favorite locations include our nearby botanical gardens as well as our local art center.

• Consider bringing only a notebook and pen with you. This session isn’t designed to craft specific action plans - it’s for envisioning what could be - so you don’t really need a bunch of tools, spreadsheets, or data outside of your own mind and heart for this activity. The planning and details for your vision will come later.

As with the reflection, you can spend as much or as little time on your visioning as you’d like. With focused intention, even an hour can prove incredibly fruitful. Here’s how I like to spend that time:

Wouldn’t it be amazing if… ?

I probably sound like a broken record, but this is such an important - and often overlooked - part of meaningful achievement: Get clear on the WHAT before worrying about the HOW.

WHAT would you love to create, achieve, experience, learn, do?

Pull out your journal or notebook and jot down whatever comes to mind. It’s not uncommon for an entry to look something like this:

Wouldn’t it be amazing if, at the end of this year, I have…

• completed a 5k!

• stepped into the leadership role at work!

• gone on vacation with the family!

• received the sales award!

• regularly attended book club!

• began volunteering weekly!

• learned how to crochet!

• saved enough for a downpayment!

• launched a blog!

• preserved vegetables from the garden and farmer’s market!

• gotten together with college friends!

• held a community event!

• finished the first draft of my book!

and so on and so forth. Get all the ideas out of your head and onto paper, without censoring or trying to figure out the ‘how’ yet.

What do I MOST want to be able to say?

As the example above shows, that first step may generate all kinds of ideas in all kinds of life areas - career, fitness, relationships, finances, travel, family, home, leadership, personal growth, spirituality, volunteer service…the list of possibilities goes on. This is a great first step, but if we then went on to use that as our game plan for the remainder of the year, I suspect many of us would quickly become overwhelmed.

As the saying goes, when everything is important, then nothing is important. We need to prioritize.

If we think of Step 1 as what we’d love to be able to look back and say at the end of the year, step 2 is what we’d MOST love to be able to say. Which of these do we want to focus on? Which will make the biggest difference, given our current life stage? Where are we feeling our energy and passion drawn to the most?

Essentially, here’s where we begin turning one or a few of those ‘wouldn’t it be amazing’ ideas into goal possibilities for the second half of the year.

Personally, I like to have three bold + difference-making goals at any given time. Three feels like enough to offer variety and movement, yet not too many to feel overwhelmed or spread too thin. I often focus on one professional, one personal, and one wherever else I’m feeling most called at the moment, but this has looked different in different seasons, too. Maybe at this time in your life, finishing a certain project or developing a particular habit feels more prominent than setting three bold goals. Pay attention to what speaks to you the most.

Why do I want to pursue these goals? Why do they matter to me, and why now? What will be different upon their achievement?

I encourage you to ask a few questions like these with each of the goals or projects you decide to pursue. Your honest answers can help you connect more deeply to the goal - or to realize it’s not for you. A strong purpose, or why, also serves as the best motivator I know of, especially when an obstacle arises or progress is slower than expected.

If your why is something like ‘I don’t really want to but so-and-so is doing it so I probably should too,’ that’s probably not going to carry you very far.

If your why, however, is along the lines of, ‘Achieving this goal will help me connect more deeply with my family, feel stronger both physically and mentally, and inspire others in my community,’ well, you can just imagine how much more motivating that will be when you encounter a roadblock or need to re-energize yourself toward your goal!

Now that you’ve dreamed about possibilities, focused in on a few, and connected with the purpose behind them, commit - softly - to making those three or so goals a reality. What will it feel like to sit down on December 31, look back, and celebrate those achievements? What will be different in your work or life as a result?

I say ‘soft commitment’ here because you might want to sit with your top goals for a couple of days, start crafting action plans, and see if they remain top of mind (and top of list). If you felt excited about applying for a certification program during your July dreaming session, for instance, but then upon a bit of research learned the application process doesn’t take place until May, you might decide to shift that goal to a bit later.

Or you might realize that it’s not so much the certification itself as it is the professional development or learning experience that you’re craving; you may then decide to replace the certification with a different type of educational program that you could still pursue in the second half of the year.

I’d suggest giving yourself a time limit with that soft commitment - maybe 2-3 days - then go forth and set those goals in motion! If you’d like a partner in your meaningful achievement, feel free to reach out to discuss coaching possibilities. In addition, you might revisit a few related articles for more ideas, such as this one offering three of my favorite tools for reaching your goals and this one about confident decision-making.

Share your questions, helpful hints, or a goal that you aim to achieve during the second half of the year below. I am cheering for you!

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Dr. Christi Hegstad is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with over 23 years of experience helping people work with meaning, live with purpose, and achieve bold + difference-making goals. Find more resources, explore services, request your coaching discovery session, and more here.

Thank you for being here!