I was watching a movie on my flight from Charlotte to Minneapolis and got a mini-lesson in well-being.
One scene that really landed for me involved a kid playing Minecraft — and it was the single best example of being kind to yourself.
Let me take a step back: When I talk with my clients, I try to give them a different insight into well-being. You always hear people saying, “Get a massage!” or “Get a mani-pedi!”
And that’s great. But when I look at well-being and self love, I look at it as a conversation and it’s really more about how you’re treating yourself. You can get all the massages in the world and still talk crap to yourself.
If you’re talking down to yourself, who cares if you’ve had a massage? You’re beating the crap out of yourself with your own words.
I encourage people to look at well-being as part of a bigger conversation to have with each other.
Back to the movie and how this connects: One of the characters sits with her sister’s step-son who loves to play Minecraft. As he draws in his notebook, she asks what he’s doing, and he says before he plays the game, he likes to map out everything he wants in his scene, because when he maps it out first, he knows where everything goes and he can build it better.
This is such a great metaphor for life: we can map out our lives before diving right.
I especially see this with people who make vision boards. Vision boards can help you plan out what you want in life, creating your dreams and goals from the board up.
You might be asking, “This isn’t some version of The Secret where if I put something on a board it will magically happen, right?”
Definitely not.
Vision boards are actually a practical planning tool. Making the board isn’t going to make your dreams come true; it’s the intention behind it. The intention is we’re humans hardwired to survive and part of survival is staying small — and a vision board can open you up when you feel like playing it safe in life. It keeps you present to what you want to experience as a human being.
That’s what it’s about. It’s not about the objects on your vision board; it’s about the way they make you feel.
Making a plan isn’t black and white or even concrete. Treat it like a living, breathing entity and you can mold it every day. As you’re moving forward, like this kid with Minecraft, your basic outline will be a project design, and you’d use the vision board to keep present to that.
When you get into your life goals, make tweaks before doing things that don’t fit or feel forced to continue something you didn’t even want to start. Then, get some feedback from an objective third person to be sure your actions aren’t part of some self-sabotage pattern.
Finally, ask yourself: What do you want to create? How can you prevent getting too far along in life on the path that’s not working for you?
