hey there everybody and welcome to this video on how to create a rich and meaningful Life vision
board a cognitive behavioral therapy technique I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes when you define
your rich and meaningful life it helps you define how to effectively use your time and energy so the
first thing you want to start out with is defining your values because your values will guide your
actions for example you may choose your values to be compassion loyalty dedication and integrity
these are the things that form the foundation and sort of nurture your rich and meaningful life
the next thing you want to look at are who are the people that are important in your rich and
meaningful life and you'll notice here that I put self first why is that well if you don't have a
good relationship with yourself if you don't have a strong self-esteem then often it's going to be
hard to have a rich and meaningful life because you're going to have a lot of anxiety you may
fear abandonment so once you feel secure within yourself then you can develop healthier more
secure relationships family who in your family is important in your rich and meaningful life maybe
you're really close with everybody in your family from your sister to your seventh cousin okay great
maybe you're only close with your nuclear family and you've never met the rest of your family
so who is important same thing with friends which friends are most important in your rich
and meaningful life and which co-workers and mentors are important and you're rich
and meaningful life now these people may not be there right now these people may be people that
you want to reach out to and integrate into your rich and meaningful life but you want to kind of
put them there so you know that that is something that you want to use your energy to work toward
things what things are important in your rich and meaningful life now there's tangible things like
clothes food medicine and a safe place to call home it may not be a house that you own but a safe
place where you can create that feeling of home and then your health that's sort of intangible
what is important in terms of your health for your rich and meaningful life some people want
to have certain Health parameters and be 60 years old and still have the body of a 30 year old other
people don't care that much they want to have okay Health they don't want to be in the hospital or in
pain obviously but health is not a super focus of their rich and meaningful life so it's important
to Define where does Health fall and how much of your energy are you going to devote to that
and then experiences what experiences are important in your rich and meaningful life
your hobbies for example like rock climbing or farming or crochet or whatever your hobbies are
that is going to take time that is going to take energy but those are experiences that
help add richness to your life for some people travel is an experience that is really important
for others career is something that is an important experience in their life and it
could be the experience of getting a particular award or doing a TED talk or maybe a particular
job I have some friends who are very content being therapists they have no desire to be
upper middle management or even a CEO of their own company so the jobs that they choose are
going to influence how they spend their energy in their rich and meaningful life
competitions on here because for some people like athletes competitions like getting to the World
Series or going to the Olympics may be important experiences in their rich and meaningful life for
others competitions like um stem competitions and Engineering competitions may be important
for their rich and meaningful life so thinking about these and I abbreviated pte people things
and experiences which ones of those are important in your rich and meaningful life
so once you've started to think about that and I encourage you to make a list then find a picture
of each person thing or experience that is important in your rich and meaningful life
attached to that picture a description of what that is like in your rich and meaningful life
it's not enough just to say I want to have my aunt Jan in my rich and meaningful life well okay
so you just wanted to sit there or or what what does your relationship with your aunt Jan look
like in your rich and meaningful life so you'll describe that additionally for that same person
identify what you can do to address and nurture that relationship into what you want it to be
so that's going to be an addition to that sheet that you attach to the picture
then on another sheet of paper identify any barriers to what you hope to achieve and ways
to address them for example my aunt Jan lives in South Florida and she is not able to travel
anymore so how can I have the rich and meaningful relationship that I want to have with her despite
the fact that we are 800 miles away so I would put that on my sheet for that particular aspect
of my rich and meaningful life and you'll do that for every person thing and experience in
your rich and meaningful life does it take a little bit of time yeah it does but then
you end up with something that you can see you can visualize when you have time when you have
energy you can look at it and go where do I want to spend some of this energy when you are trying
to make a decision about whether you have time or energy to do something you can look at your
board and you can say do I have time and energy to do this over here or do I need am I spending
my energy on the things that are important to me and that helps you move toward implementation
what I have a lot of my clients do as well as I do myself is to create a vision board and for a
lot of us being able to see this and to visualize it kind of uh puts things into perspective it's a
very easy quick look summary abstract whatever you want to call it of what's important in your rich
and meaningful life so this is an example vision board that I created and on the bottom I have the
values remember I said the values nurture your life the values guide your decision making so if
you're living a life according to your values then your rich and meaningful life will likely flourish
and then I have my two children I have myself I have my husband my husband's brother
and my uncle I don't know who I really intended that to be in this particular iteration and then
I have my in-laws and those are all important people in my rich and meaningful life now my
parents and my grandparents have all passed on so that's why they're not on here not that I don't
love them they just are not present in my rich and meaningful life or needing my attention in my rich
and meaningful life at this point in time then I have the heart health is really important to me
I have a therapist sitting over here in a tree and my career is very important to me and what I
do with YouTube as well as what I do in practice is really important and then I have my critters
and I stopped at three well four cats and two dogs which we actually have three dogs now but
you get the picture uh that my animals are very important to me making sure they have a happy life
and then my farm in terms of experiences I love being able to grow my own food I love being able
to nurture the animals that I have on my farm now I actually don't have a pig but the pig happened
to be in in the picture that I selected but and then the sun and the dove represent spirituality
to me those are important in my life so I have them as part of my vision board so when I have
down time or when I'm feeling in a funk I can look at my vision board and I can say am I
using my life or my energy to enhance my rich and meaningful life and I can really get some
perspective on how have I spent my energy over the past week and has it moved me closer to or
further away from my rich and meaningful life I hope this technique is really useful it's helpful
for people who are visual in nature so try it out see how it works and let me know in the comments