Hey, guys, Dr. Axe here.
Welcome to Maximize Your Health.
Today I'm going to be talking about building a vision for your life and this is... a lot
of times on the show, I talk about nutritional things to do, things to do in terms of fitness,
supplements to take.
But today really, this is maybe the most important aspect of being healthy.
And remember, the definition of health isn't necessarily looking good from the outside
or having muscle or being thin.
It's really having health in wholeness body, mind, and spirit.
And so what I want to talk about today is building a vision board.
And I'll tell you of all the things that I've ever done in my life that have really helped
me whether it was to be successful or be happy or accomplish certain fitness goals, nothing
was more vitally important than creating a vision board.
What a vision board is, it's taking the visions and the dreams you have for your life and
putting them on paper and then putting them on a board.
And so you can see here, I have a pretty big vision board here and what I've done is I've
taken my goals, I've written down a strategy of how to get there, and then I took pictures
of all of these things and put them up on a board.
I want to walk you through how to do this yourself.
And again, this isn't one some sort of silly exercise or something like, "Hey, that's just
a funny thing to do or only for people who are into arts and crafts."
I'm not the arts and crafts type of person, okay?
I can hardly draw a stick figure.
So again, this is something that's easy to do, it's fun to do, but it will help you achieve
your goals.
And really dreaming and having a vision, that's a big part of what life is all about, finding
your purpose.
And so when it comes to building your vision board, the first thing you want to do is you
want to sit down and start writing out what is it you want to do with your life, what
is your purpose, why are you here.
And what I did is I've broken my life down into five categories.
I have spiritual, physical, professional, relational, and then recreational goals even
and then we have all these things up here.
And so now first thing...
so what I do is I break those areas down into five categories and I write down what do I
want to accomplish, what I want to do in my life over the next year, five, ten years in
this area.
So like spiritual goals here, I have different things I like, I want to make sure I join
a men's group.
So I'm in a men's bible study, I do that.
I want to spend one hour with God every morning.
I want to make sure I'm tithing.
Those are all things I put down.
Those are some of my spiritual goals I have down here at number one.
So whatever it is for you, write down your spiritual goals.
Step number two, what are your physical goals.
I have an accomplishment, I want to do a half Ironman this year, triathlon.
For you, maybe it's doing your first 5k, maybe it's losing 20 pounds.
And then I wrote down a certain body fat and weight, what I want on there.
So get very specific, what are your health goals.
Write those down.
Step number three here is professional and financial.
What are your professional financial goals?
I know a few years ago for myself, it was getting debt-free.
And so you'll see up here professional.
In the past, it would have been get debt-free and then make a certain amount of money, professionally
write a book.
I wrote the Real Food Diet book.
We have all these different things.
Whatever your goal is, your biggest financial professional goals, write those down.
And remember what Jim Collin says in his book Good to Great, when you write down goals,
they should be BHAGs, big hairy audacious goals.
It means, don't write down, "Oh I want to get by doing this."
Whatever your dreams are, sky is the limit.
Go for them.
Now you do want to be realistic, okay.
But again, you want to push yourself when it comes to writing down those goals.
Step number four, relational.
I put down things here like, "I want to have really deep relationships with other health
leaders."
I put down things like, "I want a relational, have incredible experiences with friends and
go on mission trips together."
Those are things that I love doing.
So write down some of your relational goals.
And another thing I wrote down relationally is, there is a certain amount of people I
want to be connecting with.
Number five, last thing here, are personal recreational goals.
So recreational, I put things like go on road trips and mission trips around the world,
own a lake house eventually one day.
Do outdoor events with friends like cycling and trail running.
So I have those.
These are just some of my recreational goals and you may have places to visit or places
to travel to.
So maybe it's a mission trip to Israel or maybe it's going to the beach at Destin.
I don't know what it is for you.
There are some ideas.
So step number one when it comes to making your vision board, write down your goals in
these five areas.
Second thing you want to do then, once you have your goal down, you want to write down
what is your strategy for getting there because its easy for us to say, "Hey, I want to lose
20 pounds."
Well, how are you going to lose 20 pounds?
You're not just going to keep sitting around doing the same thing you've always been doing
and lose 20 pounds.
And so then, you break it down and say spiritually, "Okay.
Well, how am I going to do an hour every morning with God?"
"Well, from 6 to 7 in the morning every morning, that's my time with God."
So you write that down.
Physically, "Okay.
How am I going to do this half Ironman?
I'm not going to sit on the couch all day long and do half Ironman.
I'm going to bike, swim, and run three times a week."
I schedule it.
You put that down here.
And then you so on and go on through these different things.
Relationally, I put down stay connected to my men's group and so I make sure there's
three to five guys that I'm always staying connected with.
I'm doing a call with once a week.
I'm working on developing and building those relationships.
So again, write down your strategy to get there.
Once you have your goals, then once you have your strategy, you want to find pictures that
reminds you of these things.
And so just to show you a few of mine here, I have here this book I read at one point.
It's called Sun Stand Still.
It's all about really having faith and this was spiritual and taking steps out there like
God was working on my behalf, having favor with him, doing that.
I have down here, I want to eventually want to be on 300 radio stations, our radio show
is actually now being syndicated across the country.
And so I put that down as one of my goals, is we want to be on 300 radio stations around
the country.
That's one of my goals.
We've got good old Dave here doing his radio show and he's done it, getting debt-free,
being financially wise.
That's why I put his picture up there.
I put other things up here.
I put up Martin Luther King, Jr.
I put his picture up because I want to aspire to help set people free.
So I put that up there as a reminder.
And then I have other things.
I have going to the Olympics next year.
I want to swim, bike.
I want to do green drinks for breakfast, so I put some green vegetable juice up there.
And then traveling places.
I want to go to Israel.
Eventually, I want to go to New Zealand.
But again, think big.
Whatever your heart desires, whatever your dreams are, put those on your vision board.
And then I also put some relational things from the past, some close friends we went
to Destin with there.
Some of my family members we did a race together.
But again put all of your biggest goals in life on the vision board.
And then here's what I do.
Every single morning and every night before I go to bed, right when I pop up in the morning,
what I'll do is I'll come over and look at my vision board, I just remember, "Hey, you
know what, life is exciting.
This is why I'm getting up in the morning."
I have actually found this is the number one way to beat depression.
A lot of times we get depressed or tired because we forget what we're doing and some of the
great things we have going on in life.
And so the great thing with the vision board is you've got this here, you wake up and then
you're like, "Man, life is great."
I get to achieve and go after and do many of these things.
And it also just keeps you on the right track.
It's a good thing to build in your subconscious as well.
Before you go to bed, take a look at your vision board.
And I challenge everyone to do this.
Again, I'll tell you the way that I did this.
I took about half an hour, wrote down my goals, took another 30 minutes, wrote down a very,
very basic strategy.
And then I took another hour or two and just get on Google images and I got basically all
these pictures I just searched.
I looked up green drink on Google and then I just printed them out.
I went and bought a corkboard here.
You can buy them at Walmart, Target, Staples, any of those places and then I got tacks and
I just tack this up.
But again, have a big vision for your life.
Create a vision board.
I guarantee you, it will help you achieve your health goals.
This is another episode of Maximize Your Health.
This is Dr. Axe, thanks for watching.