Writing this halfway through the year seems like it’s a bit delayed for talking about a vision board, but I don’t think so. The calendar year is arbitrary in my opinion when it comes to working towards your goals.
I made this vision board at the beginning of the year based on goals that I wrote in my journal. Now that we’re entering summer, and I’ve taken some solid steps forward in some inner work I’ve needed to go through in order to be in a better place to work towards my goals, I find myself revisiting my vision board to check in on what I was striving for this year.
As I revisit these goals, I’ll share and explain them to you!
My Process
As I mentioned, I started this vision board by writing down some broad goals that I’d like to work on and accomplish this year (or build upon steps to work towards long-term goals for beyond 2026). Based on these general bullets, I created this board to see what everything could look like if they come to fruition. I’m a very visual person, so this helps give me perspective and pair it with affirmations and written goals.
Broad Vision for 2026
These are the general statements I wrote down for my goals that I used for my 2026 vision board:
- I’m expressing myself confidently and fully in nearly all areas of my life
- I’m traveling to new, exciting places around the world
- Spending quality time with people and pets that I love dearly
- Expressing and exploring my creative passions
- Making lots of money sustainably
- In a beautiful home of our own
- Feeling healthy, radiant, and strong
After this, I wrote down some more specifics of what the broad goals look like in practice, and I’ll explain them further with you below.
Goals Breakdown
Goal 1: Express myself confidently and fully
In the last few years, I’ve noticed myself losing my self-confidence over time. This is something I’m actively working on in therapy, and I think a part of this is because I burned out a few times over the years and became scared of taking on too much and burning out again. Combine this with my husband experiencing two layoffs (including one unemployment period that lasted a full year), and my habits started drifting to what was comfortable, safe, and honestly….limiting. I wasn’t trying new things, working towards goals that challenged me, and overprotected myself.
I think quite a few people are experiencing this as an overcorrection for taking care of our mental health. Pursuing a “soft life” isn’t a bad thing, but we have to be careful we don’t take it too far and stop experiencing life in a way that’s helping us learn, grow, and embrace ourselves and our experiences fully. By holding myself back in this way, I was slowly losing my confidence to be able to learn new things, challenge myself, and some deeply rooted subconscious beliefs about myself that I had previously worked through started coming back, also affecting my confidence levels.
While working through this with my therapist since the end of 2025, she pointed out that I’ve always had an issue and fear of being seen. That concept had never been pointed out to me, but it makes complete sense. Part of that ties into wanting to please people, being a perfectionist, and overall not feeling confident in myself.
Embracing my life more fully, and doing so with confidence, will unlock so much for me and help me get out of the funk I had been experiencing for the last couple years. This is why the fine tuned goals I wrote after creating this vision board to help encompass this goal was:
I embrace imperfection and let myself be seen regularly.
I regularly choose experiences that disrupt routine and expand my perspective.
Goal 2: Traveling to New Places
With my husband’s scattered unemployment, travel was something that took a backburner for us. He and I were supposed to go to Italy for our first European trip together back in 2020, but of course…we all know what happened then.
At that time, I had never been to Europe. I’ve traveled outside of the United States a few times with my family to Mexico, St Lucia for my honeymoon, and a few other scattered places, but never beyond the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. However, in 2024 the company I work for was acquired by an organization based in Lithuania, so I got to travel to Copenhagen and Lithuania as my first European trip later that year!
As I’m writing this, we’re about two weeks out from my next trip abroad – work is hosting our retreat on Crete in Greece this year, so after a handful of days of the retreat, my husband will be flying out to meet me on Crete, rent a car, drive to Chania for a few days, then pop over to Athens for a couple days, then fly home! I’m very excited.
I don’t think we’ll do another trip abroad this year, but we are working on taking more long weekends on and off throughout the year. Plus, my family might be going abroad to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday in January next year, so the rest of this year may be planning for that!
With all of this in mind, my updated goal I wrote for this one is:
I plan travel proactively.
Goal 3: Spend quality time with loved ones
I don’t think there was anything specific that happened that triggered setting this goal, except that spending time with friends, family, and my cats are all really important for me, and one of my core values. I don’t live near my immediate family, and most of my long-term friends are no longer living near me as well, so making the effort to stay connected is always a priority in my life.
I show up present with the people and animals I love.
Goal 4: Expressing and exploring my creative passions
That’s what brought me back to my blog! Something I’ve figured out about myself over the years is that when I’m in a rut, it’s usually because I’m not expressing myself creatively in some way. It’s one reason why I’ve had a blog on and off since I graduated high school. Before then, I was writing fan fiction and other types of fiction stories and chapters for books that never finished. I’ve journaled nearly my entire life. Played piano on and off since I was four years old. Used to sing in elementary school, and took up hand embroidery a few years ago. Made Youtube videos on and off throughout college.
Creating is extremely important to me, but it’s also something very easy to push to the side. I binge a lot of TV (lately, watching all of RuPaul’s Drag Race from the beginning for the first time), play video games, and scroll on Instagram a bit too much. I read on and off, but primarily listen to audiobooks during my drive to work. There’s actually a lot of time in my day where I could dedicate even 15-30 minutes to doing something creative, but I simply don’t prioritize it enough.
Coming back to this blog is one step. And even that hasn’t been perfect or consistent. But actually, those two words are something I’m trying to actively unravel from my core…perfection and consistency in the lens of perfectionism have led me to feeling stuck, because I’ll be frustrated that I haven’t been consistent or haven’t reached a specific goal. But exploring that any further is probably for another blog, another day.
I’m still embroidering, just not as frequently as I was in the past few years. It’s a wonderful, beautiful hobby, but I’m just going with the flow for when I actually want to work on a project instead of forcing myself to crank out finished pieces and hit specific deadlines.
Something new that’s been scary for me to dip my toe into creatively is dance. I took dance classes when I was very little, but didn’t do anything much further than that. I was always a little bummed that my high school was too small to have any sort of drama or dance class, but I was also extremely shy and concerned about other peoples’ opinions. To be honest, it took me a couple years of this little nudge of desire in the back of my head to want to try dance again as an adult to be strong enough that I told my husband that it’s something I’m interested in doing for fun. He thinks it’s great, and I don’t know why it’s something a little scary to admit. I’ve taken three classes so far this year back in January, but stopped because I was experiencing some issues and pain in my neck. The studio I was going to also was in a tough spot with class times that weren’t ideal with my work schedule, so I took a long break, and started making excuses for not trying again.
But as I’m writing this, tomorrow I have another class booked at a new studio! Hopefully if this is something I want to continue doing, I’ll share more about my journey as it unfolds.
I create consistently, even when imperfect.
I treat creativity as a practice, not a mood.
Goal 5: Making lots of money sustainably
My husband and I both have a tendency to put a lot of ourselves into our jobs. Over the years we’re slowly improving on having our jobs not be the center of our lives, but it’s still a challenge. We’ve also struggled with consistent dual income because of his multiple layoffs he experienced at the start of the decade. We’ve been very grateful and fortunate to have consistency overall with at least one form of income, but there really is something to be said about making a certain amount of money that can help lift you towards reaching goals and living life the way you want to live.
Ultimately with this one, it’s an overall mindset and aspiration towards living a balanced life with our careers and life outside of them, as well as having enough money to travel, purchase a home, take care of our pets and loved ones, and simply live life.
Goal 6: In a beautiful home of our own
We haven’t purchased a home yet, and it’s honestly been okay because it’s a good thing we didn’t take on that type of debt before experiencing my husband’s layoffs. But it’s something we want to work towards, and there may be opportunities next year for us to accomplish this. So this year was going to be dedicated to learning about the process, what we need to do, and preparing our finances accordingly.
I’ve watched some videos and have a very very basic understanding of the process, but we definitely need to prioritize this a bit more the closer we get to 2027.
I make decisions that move us steadily towards owning a home.
Goal 7: Health, radiance, and strength
There’s a lot that can go into this one, but ultimately I want to feel strong, healthy, and proud of my body. I’m a former high-school athlete, and when I worked at Disney in college I was walking thousands of steps a day. Before the pandemic, I was working out at a gym every other day and taking 30 mins worth of walks throughout the day every work day. After switching to remote work, my activity plummeted. New habits formed, and my back pain got worse.
I also struggle with an all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to working out and healthy habits. I’ll beat myself up if I’m not consistent, experience an injury that sets me back, and overall have a lot of guilt and shame over the concept of “starting over.” But through therapy and a lot of inner work, I’m learning that this is just part of life in general, and it’s truly okay. I’m embracing the baby steps mentality and hoping to build a foundation of healthy habits that add up to feeling overall better as a person.
And those are my goals for 2026! It was great revisiting them, and appreciate you taking the time to read through them. It’s nice to get back into writing in this way, and I’m looking forward to exploring even more of this year together.
What are your goals for the year?
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