Don’t Let Your Fear of Commitment Keep You From Planning.

Planning and vision framing isn’t a commitment- it’s a guide getting you from point A to point B, which can be adjusted as much or as little as you want.

We get it, putting a plan in place can sound like a big task to anyone. Maybe you’re a single father, and you feel like you don’t have the time or resources to keep up with a strategic plan. Or you’re a married couple, and the thought of sitting down together to make a plan can seem like a daunting task.

Well, guess what? It doesn’t have to be! 

Most of us choose to put off planning because of fear. Stress in preparation of making a plan is a very normal feeling and affects more people than it doesn’t. You might be afraid that the goal is unattainable, or you have a fear of committing to one path. Our goal is to help you dismantle those fears and show you the easy and attainable way to make those big decisions turn into smaller successful steps. 

An essential part of planning is taking the time to do what we call Vision Framing. Vision Framing consists of 4 keys elements. In vision framing, you take a look into who we are and why we do things and where we want to be in the future. When you plan out these steps, you can use it to keep your vision and goals on track.

These four vision elements are:

Our mission (what are we doing) 

Values (why we are doing it) 

Strategy (how we plan on doing it) 

Measures (when do we find success) 

Now let’s see how this vision planning can play out in real life-

Mission: 

Your mission can be something as simple as; Saving for your children’s College Education Fund.

Values:

Your value in saving for your children’s education is because you believe saving for their education will help them out later in life and relieve any extra stress in taking out student loans.

Strategy: 

You need a strategic plan in place to make this vision a reality. This part is crucial when you want to save for your child’s education, but it most likely will not happen without a plan in place. 

So this means goal-setting needs to be a part of your strategy.

Let’s take a look at how goal setting works for this family. 

This family that is vision planning is a two-income family that brings in around 100k per year, and they are planning to save 240K for their child’s college education. Their child is one year old, so they have roughly 18 years to save for this goal.  I know this feels like an unattainable goal to many. But the strategy isn’t to focus on the end goal – the plan is to focus on the small steps that get you there. 

This family’s goal is to start out saving $200 a month for the fund.

They most likely won’t just have an extra $200 laying around each month to save, so they will need to be strategic where they save that money. This family might eat out 3 to 4 meals a week. To save that extra money, they have decided they need to cook those meals at home. This step involves extra planning and communication on their part as a couple. But the small successes of cooking those meals at home will lead to more significant progress in saving money each month for their child’s education. 

Give yourself small successes that you can hit every year. These small wins will increase your motivation to keep working at your vision – even when it seems you aren’t making significant strides – the small successes will propel you onto the more prominent achievements. 

Every goal that you have in your life is solvable. You just need to take the time to figure out why you want to hit this goal and what it’s going to take for you to get there.