From Vision Board to Reality: 5 Daily Practices for Achieving Your 2025 Goals

In this empowering episode, host Shelby John breaks down how to transform your vision board into tangible results. Perfect for sober women ready to make 2025 their breakthrough year!

Key Highlights:

• Morning Vision Practice: Spend 3 minutes connecting with your vision board and choosing one focus area
• Future Self Navigation: Make decisions by asking "What would my future self do?"
• Weekly Vision Reviews: 15-minute Sunday check-ins for gentle course correction
• Vision Anchors: Creating physical reminders in your environment
• Daily Celebration Practice: Acknowledging small wins for lasting motivation

This episode builds on December's vision board workshop with Jeanette (previous episode). Learn practical steps to implement your vision, regardless of where you are in your recovery journey.

Resources Mentioned:

• Vision Board Workshop Episode with Jeanette (December 2024)
• Vision Planner Download (link in episode)

Connect with Shelby:

• Instagram: @shelbyjjohn
• Facebook Group: Confident Sober Women

Remember: Progress over perfection. You can't fail unless you quit, and you can always hit the reset button to realign with your vision.

Transcript

 Hey there, sober ladies. Thank you so much for joining me today for the Confident Sober Women podcast. I am so glad that you are here and happy 2025. My name is Shelby John. I am the host of the Confident Sober Women podcast, where we have empowering conversations for wisdom seeking women dedicated to building a life they don't want to escape from and who found joy and confidence in their alcohol and drug free lives. 

And today, we are diving deeper into the vision work for 2025. You may have listened to one of the many episodes back at the end of December, where we discussed creating a vision board with Jeanette, and that was super awesome. She really explored the foundations of creating a vision board, and if you didn't listen to it, I would highly encourage you to go back and do that, because it was really helpful. 

So now I've been hearing from many of you asking, okay, so I've got my vision board. Now what? How do I actually make this happen? Great question. And today we're getting into the nitty gritty of turning those beautiful visions into reality.  I'm going to share with you five practical steps. that you can start implementing right now, no matter where you are in your recovery journey, or in your life.

So before we jump in, remember, this isn't about perfection. I always feel like I need to make sure we address that because sometimes some of us women, you know who you are, we tend to think that everything has to be perfect. And sometimes when we think that way, we just don't do anything at all, because if it's not perfect, then we aren't going to do it.

So This is not about perfection. It's actually about being a little messy. It's about progress and staying committed to your dreams one day at a time. And as women in recovery, we're already experts at taking things one day at a time, right? That's what we hear all the time, one day at a time.  So let's get started with step one.

This is your morning vision practice. Now I know what you're thinking, right? You've heard this all before, you've seen the Instagram plaques, not another morning routine. But hear me out on this, okay? This is a little different. I want you to spend just three minutes, three minutes, each morning connecting with your vision.

That's it. Three minutes. So here's what you do when you first wake up before checking your phone or jumping into your day. You sit somewhere quiet, you look at your vision board, hopefully you have a actual display of it or it's a digital display, maybe you have a photo of it on your phone or pasted on your refrigerator or wherever, and I want you to choose one thing from that vision to focus on for that day.

Just pick one thing.  And then ask yourself, what is one small action I can take today? that moves me closer to this vision.  So maybe your vision includes running a marathon. I know we've talked about that a lot based on my own experience. And your one action might be as simple as laying out your workout clothes for tomorrow.

That's it!  It's a small, doable step that leads you to your big vision of running a marathon.  So three minutes in the morning, you're picking one part of your vision board to focus on and then you're going to do one small thing that leads you to that vision.  Step number two is what I like to call future  self navigation.

So really throughout your day when you're dealing with different decisions, the big and small ones of life, I want you to take a minute and pause. Ask yourself,  what would my future self do?  I love this activity. Doing future self work is really practical and it's also immediate. So whether you're deciding what to eat for lunch, or what project to take on, or what to even wear, you ask yourself, what would your future self do?

And then you let that future self guide you in that decision. This is for all decisions.  So if your vision includes vibrant health, and you're staring at the office donuts, You want to ask yourself, what would my healthy, energized future version of myself choose in this situation? So it's not about restriction or punishment, absolutely not.

It's about aligning yourself with your own vision, the one you created, the one you want.  So this makes sense, right? So you're going to make the decisions of the day, every single time you're faced with one, you're going to make it based on your future self.  Step three is weekly revision reviews. Every Sunday night, I want you to take maybe 15 minutes, 10 15 minutes, with your vision board and maybe a journal or a piece of paper or the notes app on your phone, and look at where you are now compared to where you were last week. 

What worked, what didn't work, where did things go well, what needs some adjusting.  This isn't about beating yourself up, remember this is not about perfection. We don't do that. That's it. This is about gentle course correction. It's like a GPS when, it's spiraling and it's saying recalculating.

You're still heading in the same direction, the same destination. But sometimes we get off track, right? Sometimes we do eat the donut. Or sometimes we forget to do our morning vision. And that's okay. So this is a weekly check in where you just spend 10 to 15 minutes with your vision board and your journal and you look at where you are now compared to where you were last week.

We are looking for tiny, incremental changes over time, done consistently, that's going to lead you to that huge transformation that you're looking for in your future self.  And step four is creating what I call vision anchors. These are physical reminders of your vision that you place in your everyday environment, right?

If your vision includes something like financial abundance, maybe you change your phone password. to a meaningful number that represents your income goal. That would be pretty cool, right? Or if it's about fitness, you put your running shoes by the door. Where you see them, first thing in the morning,  you want some physical anchors of your vision. 

You could also use a post it notes. You could use cut out pictures or even little stickers, maybe like a colored sticker, like a red sticker or something that just that you know goes with your health goals. And so you stick that in your car or something. And so every time you get in your car and that red sticker, it's a reminder to your brain that says I don't, I don't stop for fast food.

I have food at home because I'm working on my health. So the key is really making your vision.  unavoidable in your daily life. We want to remove all the barriers and make sure that you are completely surrounding yourself with reminders that keep you focused and motivated.  And step five is crucial. You want to celebrate  yourself.

You want a celebration practice.  We often wait to celebrate until we've reached the big goal, right? The end. But I want you to celebrate the small wins every single day. So if you have a big goal of health and one of those things includes drinking more water and you're saying I want to drink a gallon of water a day, and then you did that, I want you to celebrate that.

I drank my water today. So we're going to celebrate that goal. Did you save, 5 towards your goal? You want to celebrate that. So these tiny incremental changes done consistently every single day over time is what leads to the huge transformations that get you to the vision you've created that is your future self.

So create a celebration ritual that works for you. Maybe it's a happy dance in your kitchen or writing in your gratitude journal or a Maybe it's just calling a friend or maybe it's a special date night, or a meeting a friend for coffee or having an Epsom salt bath, whatever it's going to work for you that involves things that are positive and not going to influence your goals.

You want to point, the point is really to acknowledge your progress. We want to celebrate our progress no matter how small it seems. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure I address something really important. You might be thinking right now, what if I get off track? What if I miss a day or even a whole week?

And the beautiful thing about vision work is you can't fail unless you quit.  So unless you stop completely.  You can't fail. What if I get sick and you have, the flu or you're, or somebody in your family is having a hard time and you're, now you're completely changed. Your whole schedule has changed.

You just start again tomorrow. If you miss a day, you just start again tomorrow. If you've had a rough week, you just start again tomorrow. Your vision is still there. It's not going to change because you created that whole vision board. We're not aiming for perfection, we're aiming for progress, right?

This is especially true in our recovery journeys as well. And every day is a new opportunity to align yourself with your vision. And every moment, is a chance to choose again. I always say, we can hit the reset button anytime during the day. You can find, we used to joke with the kids. We would say okay, find your reset button.

And we'd find it maybe like on your collarbone or on your belly button or something. And we'd pick a spot and we'd call that our reset button. And so throughout the day, you can hit that reset button anytime. And then you can decide from now on, I'm making healthy choices. From now on, I'm not spending any more money. 

From now on, I'm getting back to my vision of my future self. No worries if you miss a day or if you miss a week. If you get off track, because life is going to life all around us, right? You are implementing these steps. Slowly but surely, every single day, and you're doing the things that you can to move yourself towards your vision, and you can course correct at any single time.

That's also why that big weekly check in is helpful, because we want to be able to do a quick check in and be like I missed two days this week, or I got a little off track because the kids were sick, or there was a snow day, or whatever. And then you can just start again. No worries at all. 

So I'd really love to know how you personally are implementing these steps. We all do this a little bit differently. Some of us are morning people. We love a morning routine. Some of us are evening people. Some of us love to journal. Some of us would rather,  There's so many different ways. So take a screenshot kind of while you're listening to this and share it in the Facebook group, the Confident Sober Women Facebook group and tag me.

Make sure you tag me or you can share it on Instagram and you can tag me there. I'm sj, I'm shelbyjjohn on Instagram  and let me know which one of these things resonates with you the most. What do you know? You're going to be doing every single week with this Vision Planner.  And if you haven't downloaded that Vision Planner episode from, with Jeanette from December, make sure you go do that right now.

The link will be in the show notes below. It can be found on any of the major platforms, and I think you will really get a lot out of that. Remember, ladies, your vision is possible. And you are worthy of every dream on that board. You in fact are the one that created it. You are worthy of them. So keep showing up, keep taking those small baby steps and keep believing in yourself.

And when the doubt creeps in or when the mistake happens, hit that reset button and then just keep going.  All right. So until next week, I want you to stay confident, stay sober and keep showing up for yourself.