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The Beautiful Why of Planning

November 7, 2017 2 Comments

Plan Your Life So You Live Beautifully – The Why of Planning

Someone very near to me (who will remain unidentified) questioned why I plan. They didn’t see a point to practicing my handwriting and my lettering. They suggested that I get my priorities in order. Um… Isn’t that what I am doing when I am planning? This conversation devastated me, and probably took a month or longer to shake off. It was with someone who I expected to back me up and to understand me – no matter if they understood what I was doing. Their suggestion stated that they did neither.

I don’t know what they were meaning when they told me that I should get my priorities in order. I took it to mean that they thought I was wasting my time. But the thing is…I have so many big plans and so many ideas! Tired of sitting, doing nothing but I had no purpose. It wasn’t until I started planning that I felt like I had a purpose to my life. Before I started planning, I was wandering blindly through life, not enjoying anything. To be completely honest, I was miserable and I made everyone else around me miserable too.

I realize a lot of people out there who might not understand what I do or why I do it.

I came up with a list of reasons why I plan:

I plan so we, as a family, know what we need to do.
So we don’t miss an appointment.
Personally, I plan so I can have more time to carry out what I want to do.
I plan so I can get my errands done in record time so we can do other fun things like go to the park, go on walks, so we can play outside, or watch a movie as a family.
I plan so we have more quality time together.
I plan so I can live better.
I plan so I don’t spend as much money on eating out.
I plan to save money.
I plan because I like feeling accomplished.
I like to set goals.
I like to see how far I’ve come.
I plan because it helps balances me emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

I plan so I can live more beautifully.

This has become my planning/life mantra when I came up with it a couple of months ago. You may have noticed in earlier blog posts. Now you know why.

There are lots of different ways to plan.

There are many planning systems to use: hardbound, traveler’s notebooks, spiral bound, pre-dated, disc bound etc. Styles of planning are endless – minimal, art journaling, weekly, monthly, daily and a mix of these. Add accessories such as stickers, washi tape, doodling hand-lettering, or stamps. None of these options is wrong if it works for you. I like the bullet journal because I can change it to suit my needs. One week I may need a very clean, minimal layout, the next, I may need to immerse myself in a full-color water-painted page with pretty lettering and motivational quotes. Creating is part of my ‘why’ for planning and I like a variety.

Re-discovered Talent and Passion

I used to paint and draw every day. Then life happened to me and I forgot. I literally forgot that I liked to draw and paint for 12 years. When I started keeping a bullet journal as a planner, the pages were open for my interpretation. I started doodling again. Then I started drawing again. Shortly after, I found a paintbrush and I tried something new for me – water coloring. I had never attempted to watercolor before. What was this magic I had missed? Not long after this, I started seeing this concept of hand-lettering words and phrases that looked like calligraphy.

I practiced calligraphy a long time ago, but this looked different to me. I started trying to make the thin and thick lines that were so clear in this newfound version of calligraphy. And quickly fell in love with it.

Personal Changes Accompanying the Filled Pages

As I filled up the pages of a dotted notebook, I realized that I was changing too. I had passion in my life and I loved more deeply, not just journal-related things, but the people in my life as well. I found that I wanted to improve – as a person. Setting goals became a regular thing in my life; I haven’t liked to set goals before I started planning and keeping a journal. I do now and I enjoy it. Seeing the improvement is addictive.

What’s more, is I have started to accept myself as a person. I have started to see my worth.

This change is the most significant change I have seen in my life. Ever. Because there were times that I questioned if I belonged anywhere.

So to the anonymous person that questioned me and told me to get my priorities in order. I am. I am more than you know. This little book has brought me from the lowest of lows in my life to a place where I enjoy living again.

So friends, ask yourself why do you plan? And be honest with your answers. Certainly, you’ll discover some real gems in your life.

I plan so I can live more beautifully.

I hope you live your life so you can live more beautifully as well.

~ Tricia

Read: Give your Goals & Plans a Defined Timeline or View my November 2017 set up

Give Yourself a Little White Space – in design and life

November 3, 2017 3 Comments

Good morning! Well, its morning here and the start of a new day. Thank goodness for fresh starts! It is amazing what can happen when your baby doesn’t wake you up in the middle of the night. But I did have a terrible dream at the end of the night – it involved two of my old bosses. In the dream, they were Nazis and had to go through all my stuff and claim anything of worth for forgiveness of their own sins. I really didn’t want them to find my laptop but I was most upset that they were making my husband do the dirty work. The psyche is an interesting space, especially in dreams.

Looking at next week’s plans, I don’t have much on the agenda. For that, I am grateful. That dream was cause for some reflection. I think I need some downtime to organize and think about goals and priorities for the next year – just like I suggested in my last post. I like to call downtime ‘white space’. White space in design (also called negative space) is ‘the space between the design or the unprinted area’ (thank you dictionary.com). It allows your mind to rest and process the design. If you filled an entire page with ‘stuff’ in an advertisement, nothing would stand out and the message would be lost. Then it would become wasted space. The ad would fail and you would probably lose your job…eventually.

White Space in Design and Life is Necessary

White space is necessary for design. I would say it is needed for life. I refuse to call it ‘negative space‘ in context to my life – because it is anything but negative. Speaking in a design sense, the ‘negative space’ is probably the most positive space in my life. I would love to start a revolution to the term when referring to life from ‘negative space’ to ‘positive space’ because of the significant positive impact. But changing terms would be confusing and all the designers would be angry. I like what they do so I won’t start the revolution.

Leave whitespace in your life and in your planner to easily adapt to life's unpredictability and don't forget the whiteout

Correlations, Parables & Fables

I love these plays on words. I also love life correlations. In the New Testament, they are known as parables. Where there are but there are levels of understanding in a story. The more you study, the deeper the meaning. Aesop’s fables are another source for life correlations. Open for life interpretation. If you haven’t read the fables in a long time, the Kindle edition is usually very reasonably priced. I’m not saying that I have incredible insights and you should read more into what I am saying but it sure is fun to look for alternative meanings and deeper insights in the everyday.

Add Margins to Your Life and Designs

I designed this week’s layout with a significant amount of margin keeping with the simple, minimal design. Filled with white space. In my previous week’s post, I talked about my horrible day. Here is a preview of that day on my mood tracker. I woke up the next day determined to see a better day because I don’t intend to have an entire mood tracker filled with red and burgundy. What I fully intend is to have a lot of purple, yellows, and greens. I have to allow myself to recover from these bad days and the only way I know how is to leave myself some breathing room.

Mood Tracking - First Day Flop - Tracking moods by activity

How to Bounce Back

To bounce back from a truly terrible day, I knew that I needed to take full advantage of the margins I built into my days. Scale things back a little, enjoy some sunshine, make sure I play outside with my kids, go on an impromptu mini-date with my husband. Slow down and enjoy the things in my life.

Adding margin to your life allows for the unexpected. If you have room to adjust for surprises in the day-to-day you’ll be more likely to bounce back.

While I was setting up this week’s spread, I completely miscounted the top boxes. If you look closely on Friday, you can see my whiteout (though I use correction tape, not whiteout) I don’t mind using correction tape. It fixes the problem and I move on.

In life and planners whiteout mistakes and move on!

Here are some questions for you:

I’d love to know what your response is. Or you can just use them as journal prompts.

How do you plan white space into your day?
Do you include intentional downtime in your daily activities?
What impact does this have in your life?

I hope you have enjoyed a little insight into my life, my planners, and my dreams. We are all journeying to something bigger & better – at least that’s what we hope. Journaling and planning have certainly propelled me on that course.

I wrote an early post on who I give credit to here. I’d love to know who you credit in your current journey’s progression.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

~Tricia

Add margin and whitespace to your planner and your life

Give your Goals & Plans a Defined Timeline

October 31, 2017 7 Comments

End of Year Planning – Don’t Leave it to the Last Minute

Start Early on Next Year’s Planning with a Super Simple Planning Spread – Give Your Goals & Plans a Defined Timeline. November seems like a great time to set some goals for next year. Specifically the first two weeks of November. Why then? Well because Halloween has come and gone and Thanksgiving or other holidays have not come yet. Visiting family will not arrive yet, and if you are vacationing or leaving, you have some time before the packing begins. There is a certain quiet about this time – the air is still buzzing with excitement that comes from the end of the year activities, but parties and plans have not started up – yet.

Goals & Plans a Defined Timeline - setting up for this month, next month & next year

The other reason it makes for perfect planning for next year is that next year is close, but not too close. You have some time to think. You have some time to reflect. The time is perfect to think about what you want from the next year. I am not talking about achieving anything – though you can certainly include achievements – I am mostly talking about what you want to become as a person. Become what is important to you. Decide to spend your time doing the things that will give you happiness, joy, and peace in your life.

Use the quiet spaces in the month to plan ahead and define your goal timelines | Start your goals with a timeline, not an obscure 'someday'

Define Your Timelines

This is my variation of the short-term, mid-term, and long-term goal planning. I was never good at using those planning terms – I needed a definition for the meaning of short-term, mid-term, and long-term. So I defined the timelines for me. It makes me work harder because I now have an accountability to time.

Short-term for me is Monthly.

Mid-term is something I want to accomplish in the next 2 months (sometimes I extend it to 3 months). In this case, I will be planning to complete by the end of the year.

“Next Year” I define as ‘by the end of next year’ – these are long-term goals**. I will define these more in-depth for the start of the year. This section is actually the reason I created this spread. I wanted to start thinking about my plans and goals for next year so they didn’t get swept away by the flurry of the holidays.

**I have an even longer-term goal type (more than a year) but I did not include that on this spread.

Break Your Goals into Achievable Times

Break your goals down into achievable times – when you expect to get these things done. Start where you are and give yourself a timeline – not an obscure ‘someday’. Stretch yourself a little, be patient with yourself and make goals realistic.

This month with my focus on simplicity, I made a planning & goals page extremely simple so I was not distracted by all the ‘shiny’ things. I tend to flit from one place to another and never get anything done. So I laid out this page with simple functionality in mind. (The bottom picture shows without lines for an even more simplified look).

Start Early on Next Year's Planning with a Super Simple Planning Spread - Give Your Goals & Plans a Defined Timeline

Whatever Your Plans, No Matter Your Goals

Whatever your plans or goals for the coming months or year might be, take a moment to begin your planning for next year, whether it be to spend more time on self-care, cook more, lose weight, de-junk your house, using a planning & goals page is a good place for jotting down your ideas for yourself.

Do this now before life becomes more hectic so when you are sitting down after Christmas laying out your January planner you smile knowingly at yourself and can think “I’ve already set my goals for next year”. Go ahead, call yourself an overachiever. Because you are ahead of the game.

View the entire Monthly Planner Set up

I’d love to hear what you do to plan out your next year’s plans & goals.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

Use the quiet spaces in the month to plan ahead and define your goal timelines.

Tricia

Give Yourself a Little White Space – in design and life

October 10, 2017 Leave a Comment

White Space in Design and Life is Necessary

Correlations, Parables & Fables

Add Margins to Your Life and Designs

How to Bounce Back

Adding margin to your life allows for the unexpected. If you have room to adjust for surprises in the day-to-day you’ll be more likely to bounce back.

Here are some questions for you:

I’d love to know what your response is. Or you can just use them as journal prompts.

How do you plan white space into your day?
Do you include intentional downtime in your daily activities?
What impact does this have in your life?

I wrote an early post on who I give credit to here. I’d love to know who you credit in your current journey’s progression.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

~Tricia

Life Lessons from a Trapped Hummingbird | Journal Prompts

September 13, 2017 2 Comments

The other day I walked into a garage and a tiny hummingbird was struggling to find its way out. The tiny fellow kept flying up into the ceiling for hours. I tried opening just the garage door and turning off all the lights, and yet it did not recognize the solution to its predicament. The problem for the sacred bird was that it did not stop to see how he could get out. In this case, to be free, he needed to fly down and out. But it kept fluttering against the ceiling. Eventually, I was able to catch the bird gently between two brooms with a light blanket draped between the bristles. I brought the bird down gently, walked out of the garage and let the tiny bird go. It fluttered quickly away.

A few days later, in the same garage, another bird (or maybe the same one??) was trapped. This time, the bird was so exhausted that it was easily caught by hand. We gave the tiny bird some sugar water, and when strong enough, it opened its wings and flew gratefully away, leaving a feather that spoke of how delicate the petite bird was.

Hummingbird and Feather held by hand | Life Lessons from a Trapped Hummingbird - Journal Prompt | ChocolateMusings.com #journalprompt #lifelessons #hummingbird

I love finding correlations between life events {no matter how small or large} and applying them to life.

In these cases, I could see that the hummingbirds wanted to get out, they wanted freedom. They were doing what they thought was best, by continually going up. In life, we want to go up, make more money, increase our happiness, climb the social or corporate ladder, up, up up. Sometimes, however, we get too caught up with progression to actually progress.

I am not a counselor or a therapist, but these are questions I ask myself to find out where I am, where I want to go, and what is keeping me from getting there.

Here are questions to ask yourself about your life goals:

Do I know where I want to go?

If your answer is ‘no’, stop and ask yourself what it is you want in a week, a month, a year. It could be your lack of goals that is keeping you from moving forward.

Then ask yourself:

Where am I right now?
Where do I want to go?
What is stopping me from achieving what I want?

Are we like this hummingbird who so desperately wants to go up, but cannot see that the way out is not up? Sometimes if you just take a moment to adjust your view, you can fly higher than you ever thought possible.

Watercolor hummingbird with paint pallets

Sometimes you have to question your “whys” as well.

Why do I need this?
Would I be happier just to move on?

If you are happier just to move on then re-evaluate your goals. It’s my opinion that your goals should always bring some sort of happiness. I’m not saying that every step of the way will be peaches and pie (is that a real saying or did I just make it up?) but goals need to be something that brings your mind peace and your soul some sort of happiness or satisfaction.

The solution to your problem could be just a “paused moment” away. If we just take a moment and meditate on our problem we can see the solution clearly. Other times, there is no way for us to escape or move on without the help of someone else. Do not be ashamed to ask for help. In fact, it takes a great deal of bravery to ask for help.

How Many Times Will We…

How many times will a hummingbird flutter into utter exhaustion just because it won’t stop to really look at the situation? How many times will we walk away from our goals and our desires because we get frustrated with hitting a ‘ceiling’?

Before you become completely exhausted, stop, and look around.

Can you see another solution? If not, ask yourself:

Who can help me?
What resources do I need?
Is there another solution?
What can I change to keep moving?

Learn from the lesson of the trapped hummingbird to solve your problem and if you need, ask for help.

Did you see any other life lessons from my hummingbird/life correlation? What did you learn? What would you use from this experience?

It’s amazing how objects and situations can take on a deeper meaning if you apply them to your life and learn from them. I painted this hummingbird a couple months before this recent experience with the hummingbirds in the garage. I look at this painting with renewed eyes and a fresh new perspective. This correlation will perhaps change the way I see these creatures going forward and it will be an opportunity to remind myself to pause, and really assess where I am in achieving my goals.

I gathered other inspiration when painting this hummingbird from the 300 Drawing Prompts Book. I love vibrant colors and how the colors shimmer, blend, and transition.

Hummingbird watercolor painting progression

Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

One other hummingbird-to-life correlation is that the video (below) is close to hyper speed (okay, maybe not that fast, but it is sped up… a lot). Don’t compare yourself to other people just because they are moving faster than you. Be certain that you are seeing all the details.

For instance: This video is just under 2 minutes. But the painting took about an hour and a half to complete. All the times when I dipped my brush in the ink are removed. I edited out the time that I stood up and stretched my legs and removed out the long conversation with my husband and left the camera running (oops).

I looked at picture after picture before I even put pencil to paper to find inspiration for this lovely little fellow. My point is, it takes a while to do things, but you may be only seeing the final result.

Just a thought to end my life lesson journey. I hope you enjoy.

I learned many things from the plight of the fragile little hummingbird. One thing I have to remind myself is that there are people around that love me and want to help me and I have to ask for help.