Photo by Natasha Fernandez on Pexels.

← CHAPTER OVERVIEW

How to keep our long-term goals in sight

I remember that I was still living in Berlin, when I first heard about bullet journals, and I immediately loved the idea.

I love to draw, and the rational thinker that I am, I love making plans and statistics, structuring, evaluating and researching things, and have been keeping notebooks full of ideas and illustrations and memories for years – so the bullet journaling method brought a lot of the things that make me happy together.

But let’s start at the beginning: What exactly is a Bullet Journal?

It is basically a personal planner, or calendar or journal, in which you can write down your yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals and things to remember so that you keep your focus where you want it.

If you’d like to find more information, you can visit the official website, and I also found this guide from Tiny Rays of Sunshine very sweet, insightful and useful.

Also, if you create your bullet journal with love and attention, it will be something to come back to and look back at and to remind you of the interesting and fun things you do and did.

What we’ve been doing in this chapter of the CREATRIX School is huge.

We’ve looked at things we’d like to do before we die, what we would like to do in the next ten, and three years, and now it’s time to really get down to making sure that we lay the foundation for this, this year.

So, depending on your current system (if you have one) you might have everything you have learned and have been working on in the CREATRIX School or in your life in general written down somewhere.

But as we all know, things in life can and will always come up, and you might move your papers away and make room for something else and once they are out of sight they might also be out of mind.

With a bullet journal, you can avoid that.

And of course, the level of attention you give to this matters. If you do this half-heartedly, then the outcome will be the same.

If you use this well, then it can be an incredible support system that can help you to make the very best of the rest of your life.

And as with everything, the better you know yourself, the better you can use this for yourself, but of course, you can also try this, to get to know yourself better.

A personal story

I’m a hard worker, and as I said above, the idea of tracking and documenting my life gets me incredibly existed – not everyone is that way.

I sat down and made plans and plans and to-do lists and checklists, and it was incredibly wonderful to be able to check off all the boxes each day.

Until I realized that I just did what I did to get my little mark by the end of the day, and not because I wanted to or because it was good for me or because I was in any way able to follow my bliss.

In fact, I would silence my intuition, so I could tick a box.

Of course, that also had to do with my level of awareness at the time and what I had put on my to-do lists and why my daily checklist looks different now, than it did then.

Then it was a day packed with half an hour for learning this, an hour finishing that, work-out, a little time for food, a little time for dog walks and no time for roaming, letting thoughts arise or being spontaneous.

I say this because this might be the best thing for some and yet, the worst thing for others.

You will know, and once you do, you can change it or leave it and do something else that is more relevant for you personally.

If you’re already putting too much pressure on yourself, this might just be what you need to lead you to complete burn-out.

So be aware of yourself and what you need and do that 😉

If you need help or have questions about this, ask (me, or someone you trust).

The best ways to use this for a Creatrix

In the self-actualization chapter of the CREATRIX School, we’ve defined some goals for our lives, for the next ten and three years and for this year.

I would recommend starting with writing these goals down at the end or the beginning of your book.

You can also include your Wheel of Life and your Wheel of Colours so that you have it all in one place.

Then I always used to create an overview page for all important events of the year so that I don’t have to look at each month when I try to plan a trip or something like that.

And then I create a monthly page and then weekly pages.

I don’t do the monthly and weekly pages in advance but month by month and week by week, as this allows me the flexibility to adjust the things that have not been working out the way I wanted yet, and try different things whenever necessary.

There is a mindfulness practice in this well.

Often, when you just buy a calendar, journal or notebook, you just write in your dates, but you don’t evaluate.

If you sit down once a year to look back at the last year, check in with your overall goals and see what you’ve learned and achieved and how you’d like to consciously create your next year, then you win and learn a lot.

Brendon Burchard has also created a High Performance Planner, that you can check out, if you’re interested in really pushing your life forward.

The daily checklist will help you to get some ideas on what to look at and think about in your daily reflections, but also in your monthly and weekly reflections, and you have the Wheel of Life and everything we went through in this Chapter of the CREATRIX School to really reflect on your life once a year.

Now just imagine reflecting on your goals and prioritizing them each month, each week and every day. Whew.

Does it feel like your life is about to change and take up more speed?

Your efforts and focus will show.

And you will see your results and your life change.

So give this a try to find out how this might best work for you and while I rarely encourage people to spend time online, I would really like to invite you to go to Instagram and Pinterest and look at all the beautiful bullet journals people have created and see how they structure theirs and then find out what style, structure and also format seems most inspiring for you and go with that.

And don’t forget to check out our new ritual and to download the morning and evening checklist – to see if my suggestions for this are something you’d like to integrate into your bullet journal as well.