• ABOUT
  • PODCAST
  • BLOG
    • MINIMALISM
    • DIY
    • SEW
    • DECORATE
    • EAT
    • TRAVEL
  • BOOK
  • CONTACT
  • ABOUT
  • PODCAST
  • BLOG
    • MINIMALISM
    • DIY
    • SEW
    • DECORATE
    • EAT
    • TRAVEL
  • BOOK
  • CONTACT
How To Plan Your Ideal Life
November 28, 2020

How To Plan Your Ideal Life

This month on the Live Free Creative Podcast, each of the four episodes has been part of a miniseries on Planning Your Ideal Life, supported by Golden Coil. Maybe sometimes you feel like your life is operating on autopilot. Maybe you have an idea of what you’d like your life to look like and feel like, but don’t know how to get started!

This post is like the cliff’s notes for the podcast miniseries, and if you take a little bit of time to reflect, dream, and then turn those dreams into plans, you’ll end up getting so much closer to where you want to be. 

Planning Your Best Week

Begin With An Annual Plan

In most everything, it is a good idea to begin with a wide perspective. At the end of one year, I like to take a little time to dream big  for the year ahead, and put those plans onto paper. Using the Golden Coil “Year At A Glance” page, I’m able to jot down major holidays and make plans, look at school and work schedules, and also get a full overview for my business projects. 

I also use this annual planning to decide if there are any fun trips, festivals, or projects I want to be prepared for. By looking far ahead, I can budget, make reservations, and be ready mentally, physically, and financially to bring my plans to life!

  1. Write down all major holidays and how you want to celebrate (travel? visiting family?)
  2. Write down time off of school or work and some ideas for how to spend that time
  3. Consider some projects, family activities, or vacations you have wanted to take and see where they might fit on the annual overview
  4. Make reservations early for good airfare, hard-to-book campsites, festivals, and other highly sought after activities
  5. Consider any annual goals for fitness, business, family life, or personal development and write down your big dreams and plans

Planning For The Seasons

Once you have a general outline of the major bird’s eye view on the year, break it into seasons. Depending on where you live, the weather might be dramatically different between winter, spring, summer, and fall. The seasons can dictate not only the types of outdoor activities that we do, but also the whole feeling of the months it covers.

Winter: a stillness, slowing down, hibernating, getting cozy, reflection, and preparation

Spring: a renewal, warming up, blossoming and growing, bringing forth new ideas and inspiration

Summer: a climax, heat and frantic energy, a time of production, extending outside of ourselves, and adventure

Fall: a transformation, cooling and letting go, adjusting for what is no longer working, winding down and going inward

Based on the natural rhythms of the seasons, I like to plan some of our family and my business activities accordingly. I try to concentrate my bigger projects in the spring and late, keeping early summer open for the adventuring with family over school breaks, and winter for reflection, planning, and stillness.

In this episode, I also invite my female readers and listeners to consider the seasons of each monthly hormonal cycle. The weeks of our menstrual cycle mirror the natural seasons of the year, and becoming aware of those changes will help us better plan for how we feel. Episode 86 with April Davis goes into a lot of detail about Flowing With Our Seasons. 

My 2021 planner includes this amazing mood tracker, which I am excited to use to keep tabs on my emotions during the year. I already expect to see some predictable patterns based on my hormonal cycle.

Build A Weekly Framework

One of my biggest breakthroughs in how I schedule my life lately has been adopting a block schedule based on my own idea of an ideal week. I walk step-by-step through this process in Episode 56  It has really been so freeing to recognize how much control I do have over my own schedule. I am an adult! Why would I fill my  days and weeks with tasks and projects, appointments and commitments that I don’t love?

When building your own weekly framework, begin by writing down all of the things you would LIKE to do in a week. If you could imagine the best week ever, what would it look like? Now, let’s aim for that as we plan!

  1. List all of the different activities you would LIKE to do each week
  2. List all of the current commitments you have each week
  3. Go  through and cross off any commitments that don’t bring you and your family joy or move you closer to the type of lifestyle you want to live
  4. Categorize your activities and commitments by type, for example,  “work” “errands” “household” “motherhood”
  5. Divide your days into blocks of time, separated by natural breaks like breakfast, lunch, work, or nap time
  6. Each block should be between 2-4 hours long
  7. Assign each block a category from number 4. Some categories will be daily, some only once or twice a week.
  8. Once you have assigned every block of time a category, you have a general framework of when all of you commitments and activities will happen within the weekly timeframe
  9. You will add specific tasks each week, as they come. For example, if you need to make a doctors appointment, book it during one of your “errand” blocks, not during a “work” block. This way, you streamline your different types of tasks in a really efficient and meaningful way
  10. Be flexible as you incorporate your weekly schedule. It will take a little while to get in the rhythm, and you will definitely need to change things from time to time as life happens! Go with the flow, and try to release everything except for the one category or block of time that you are working in at a time.

Set Yourself Up For Daily Joy

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

The final step in planning for your ideal life is to zoom in all the way to each individual day. No matter what type of high-level overview planning we do, if we don’t implement it in a daily routine, we won’t be living the life we want.

I like to plan for each day beginning the night before. I sit down with my planner and go over what tasks, appointments, commitments, and goals I have for the upcoming day. I also try to get to bed early most nights, knowing that my morning  routine actually begins in the evening the night before.

As I look over the day, I like to choose between ONE and THREE main goals or tasks to accomplish. This is my “If nothing else happens today, it will have been a total success!” list. Elise Cripe shared more about her idea of The Three Things in Episode 91.

Beyond the one or three things, I thrive having some sort of basic rhythm to my morning routine and evening routine. It helps me to think of my day with the following major vibes:

1. Morning Routine: nourish, prepare, center

2. Afternoon routine: transition, flex, and execute

3. Evening routine: reflect, connect, nurture

As I choose how to spend my days, I want to make sure I am continually making real connections with myself, my family and friends. I want to be mindful and present in the moment so I can both focus on what I am doing, and enjoy it more fully. I try to begin my days with meditation and stillness, and end with reflection and coziness. The afternoons I dig in deep to whatever I am working on, and I try to maintain perspective if I need to stop before a project is all the way complete.

More than anything else, I want my days to feel good. I welcome the natural ups and downs of life, and also choose to seek out the positive, leave space for rest, and maintain perspective about what really matters.

Putting It All Into Practice

It is one thing to know what to do, it is another thing entirely to do it. One of the reasons I am such an advocate of making plans and writing them down on paper is that the simple act of writing down plans and goals increases the likelihood of their completion by over 70%!! That is a huge benefit from such a simple act.

While any paper or planner is better than nothing, being able to customize my Golden Coil to fit my own lifestyle, with the page layouts, note pages, habit trackers and beautiful, durable design has made planning my own life more enjoyable these past four years.

If you could use some help getting your ideal life down on paper so you have a better chance of getting out there and living it,  visit Golden Coil to build a planner for your own, unique life.

Share

MINIMALISM

  • ABOUT

    Welcome! I’m Miranda, the maker mama behind Live Free Creative Company.

  • More Than Enough Book


    Have you ever felt like you were running a race you couldn’t win in life? Like there was always something more to buy or to achieve in order for you to feel like you had “made it”?In this book, I share how my heart changed and I began to find real, lasting peace, abundance, and joy through focusing on what matters most and disregarding the rest.

    Find out more here.

  • ConvertKit Form

    Five Days to Freedom: Tips for Choosing Less Stuff and More Adventure in your Daily Life

    Five lessons with practical tips and exercises to help you feel more in control of your life!

    Success!

    There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

    We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit
  • Recent on Instagram

    livefreemiranda

    Packing up for our 15th anniversary getaway (Costa Packing up for our 15th anniversary getaway (Costa Rica ☀️🌺🌴🥰) and grateful for this past month of relationship-focus. 

All of October the #livefreecreativepodcast episodes centered on ideas for a more intentional, connective marriage, in partnership with our fave all-natural intimate body oil @coconu 🥥 (watch my story highlight for more info!)

As I taught and implemented some simple tips, I noticed a measurable difference in my own partnership with Dave, and we’re so excited to continue building on that with this next week away together. 

Some of my favorite takeaways from the episodes are these: 

• Take care of yourself so you can take care of your relationship! (Ep 155)
• “Foreplay is everything that happens in between sexual encounters.” -@kristinbhodson (Ep 156)
• Have more fun simply playing together! (Ep 157)
• Learning to love one another is an ongoing process. (Ep 158)

The biggest takeaway is that great, loving, balanced marriages don’t happen on autopilot. They require an investment of intentional time, emotional energy, and commitment and can be so worth the effort!

Use LIVEFREE for 15% off your order of @coconu (it’s a perfect sexy stocking stuffer 🎁😉) and tune into the show for all of these tips and more.
    Slip-sliding into the holiday season this weekend. Slip-sliding into the holiday season this weekend. 🎃🦃🎁
Here’s a quick reminder that the most meaningful gifts of the year might not be under the tree (or on a cargo ship in the ocean. 😜🚢)

#lessstuffmoreadventure
    How well do you know your partner, TODAY? Do you How well do you know your partner, TODAY? 

Do you know their current stressors? Dreams? What they love to spend time doing and what they wish they could set down?

The Gottman Institute has found that one of the foundations of a solid, long-lasting relationship is what they call “marital friendship”. 

Marital friendship looks like getting to know your partner and then CONTINUING to get to know each other as life changes, circumstances shift, and your own core identities and understandings progress. 

This week on the #livefreecreativepodcast I share some ideas for building and updating your personal “Love Map” and even include a free, printable PDF to get the conversation started! 

Tune in on your favorite listening app. 💕
    Hi there! It’s been a little while since I intro Hi there! It’s been a little while since I introduced myself and thought I’d take a minute to share: 

1. I’m an RN patient educator turned online educator and intentional living specialist. I’m applying right now for a Master’s Degree program in Applied Positive Psychology, and look forward to adding new research and understanding to what I share in my podcast, online courses, and retreats! (🤞 I get in!)

2. I have been married 15 years, have 3 kids, 2 cats, 6 chickens, 1 dog, and love the mild chaos of our small and quite full house, #ourrichmondfixerupper.

3. I teach and share principles for wellbeing and living life on purpose in four main ways: 
• my free weekly podcast #livefreecreativepodcast
• one-on-one monthly creative mentorship
• 2x annual group online masterclass, opening again in January 2022
• small group work retreats #livefreecreativecamp and #lfcgrownupsummercamp, 2022 dates coming soon

4. I’m the author of More Than Enough, a non-fiction book about the lessons I learned during a year of not shopping. The experience and book were pivotal in my relationship to stuff and to myself.

5. I love reading, nature, tacos, running, diy projects, kitchen dance parties, loaded French fries, traveling, sleeping, teaching, making lists, trying new things, and the feeling I get when I still my thoughts for long enough to settle into the wholeness of the present moment.

6. I’ve been sharing online for over 14 years (first blogging, then Instagram…) and sometimes feel more disconnected because of the perpetual nature of these platforms. I crave the true connections we can make as humans in the real world and love using IG as a jumping off point to meet and gather, teach and learn with women in other, longer-lasting ways. 

7. I’m an Aquarius , enneagram 7, Generator, and a nuanced, unorthodox Mormon who truly believes we are all meant to walk our own pathways in this life, discovering our truest selves and finding alignment with her wholeness. ✨

Okay, that’s enough about me. Did you learn something new? 

Now, tell me something about you!! 

(Headshot by @heathermildenstein at Fall 2021 #livefreecreativecamp)
    Spending the weekend in a little corner of heaven Spending the weekend in a little corner of heaven called Idaho. 💛

I read a great article last week about how experiencing “moments of awe” and creating space to feel all of the perspective that feeling brings, can increase our overall wellbeing. 

Just stepping outside here feels like entering a wonderland— add in having fun with good friends (redesigning and styling @3in30podcast main floor ✨) and I feel pretty great. 

How will you take a moment to feel awed today? A walk outside? A quiet corner with a good book? Delighting in a lovely bite of delicious food? Remembering how lovely life can be invited even more of that loveliness into our experience.
    How much effort and intention do you put into your How much effort and intention do you put into your marriage every day? Week? Month? 

Did you know that some super simple (fun and easy) practices can keep your relationship running smoothly and help reduce the uncomfortable friction that comes when we work against— rather than in alignment with— our partner. 

Tune in to episode 157 of the #livefreecreativepodcast to hear more about these 5 practices! 

Which one jumps out to you as something you could implement easily today?
    Simple, beautiful, functional storage for the win! Simple, beautiful, functional storage for the win! ✨

In our little home (1400 sq ft) I am always on the lookout for forgotten spaces we could maximize with easy and affordable design solutions.

This over-the-keyboard nook is a perfect example of a little-used wall that transformed into an efficient family command center with about $150 of shelving supplies and 2 hours of effort.

 As soon as I finished I thought “Why on earth hadn’t I done that earlier! It’s MEANT to be like this!” 

Sending you a bit of confidence and creativity to use your own home to its fullest most meaningful potential! ✌️

#ourrichmondfixerupper
    “As long as you’re dancing, you can break the “As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. 

Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.”

— Three Things To Remember, Mary Oliver ✨

This whole week of #livefreecreativecamp was a gift— stepping outside of the passing of time to pause, reflect, gather, and connect.

Sometimes, even over a dozen years into this hobby-turned-business-turned-career, I wonder what I am even doing. If I’m doing it right or well. 

And then I remember: we’re all just sort of making it up as we go and doing the best we can with what we have. 

Dancing along to the beat of our own heart, and hopefully spreading joy along the way. 💛
    It’s impossible to put the experience of Creativ It’s impossible to put the experience of Creative Camp adequately into words. One part incredible community of supportive women meets one part deep solo work time, mixed with a beautiful location, thoughtful meals, inspired masterminds, and the kind of synergy that fills your heart to the brim. 💛

I am honored by the women who chose to step into the space I create for them, and fill it with such generosity and love.

I’m headed home with an added dose of gratitude, confidence, and friendship in my pocket. (Plus a solid first draft on an exciting new essay.✌️)

#livefreecreativecamp

Beautiful photos by @heathermildenstein
    In this week’s podcast, I sat down for a chat wi In this week’s podcast, I sat down for a chat with my friend and sex therapist @kristinbhodson to answer some community questions about sex. 💛

Our chat feels like and approachable, candid conversation with a friend, and I hope you’ll tune in and learn a little something new to increase the connection, desire, and pleasure in your own most intimate relationship.

For most of my own childhood I thought “sex” was a swear word 😂 so needless do say, there has been lots of learning, growing up, developing myself not only so my own personal relationship flourishes. Also because I know as I model a healthy, whole understanding of sex, my kids will grow up with so much more of that perspective. 

Tune in, save, share, and let me know your favorite takeaways! ☺️

#livefreecreativepodcast
    Last week we hosted our first annual #Coopstock ba Last week we hosted our first annual #Coopstock backyard bash! 🐓🎉

Celebrating our cute backyard chickens as a #HenUpOrganicsPartner was a great excuse to bring family, friends, and neighbors together to eat, chat, and enjoy live music (isn’t Luna amazing?🎶). 

I wanted a backyard flock for years before we finally made it happen, and these past three years have been a dream come true. We love taking care of our girls and @henuporganics ingredient list reads like our own grocery list: ancient grains, fruits, and vegetables. 💛

The whole night was magical, and I’m already looking forward to next year. 

Follow along to learn more about Hen Up® Organic Chicken Food by visiting https://clvr.li/HenUpCoopstock (also linked in my IG story and profile!)
    Four years ago, during our first fall living in Vi Four years ago, during our first fall living in Virginia, I rented a convertible for a day to take the kids on a leaf peeping drive through Shenandoah National Park. 🍂🍁😍

Tonight I finally spent 30 minutes compiling the video I took that day into a short montage, and remembered the fun and whimsy of that little adventure. (The kids have grown so much!! ❤️) 

I think it’s time for a repeat this year! ✌️

#lessstuffmoreadventure
    Follow @livefreemiranda on Instagram
    This error message is only visible to WordPress admins
  • FAVORITE CATEGORIES

    • DIY
    • SEW
    • DECORATE
    • EAT
    • LIFE
    • TRAVEL



© Copyright 2021 Live Free Creative Co | View our Privacy Policy