2017 PowerSheets goal planner workbook

Happy January, friends! Today, I’m sharing some of my 2017 PowerSheets goals and my word of the year.

Not familiar with PowerSheets? It’s a powerful workbook that helps you create intentional goals for the year. I’m Marketing Director and proud team member of Cultivate What Matters and this is our flagship product (that continuously sells out! Don’t worry we have more on the way coming in May!).

However, long before I joined the team last January, I’ve been a PowerSheets user.

Even before that, I loved selecting a word of the year to help guide me and set intentions. My past words have included:

intentional | focus | grow | light

Shine like the whole universe is yours quote

This year’s word is SHINE. I shared more about selecting it as my word of the year in a recent post.2016 was an incredible year.

Screenshot 2016-12-07 12.07.59

(backside of our holiday card this year)

It had highs and lows like any year, but for me, it was mostly a year of getting my feet steady again on a solid foundation.

Most of the year was spent learning how to adjust, and thriving in my new role as Marketing Director at Southern Weddings/Cultivate What Matters. This included working from home 5 days a week vs. the 2-3 days in my previous position, which for a person who LOVES work, it can be hard to unglue yourself from the chair in the office and force myself to take a break. The very hard work that the team did this year was amazingly fruitful in many different ways. It was a joy to love my work again, but also hard to personally step away from it (and get outside!). I pushed my own self hard through most of the year and was just plain tired come January 1.

Our two children are growing up like crazy and managing school schedules, morning drop-off, afterschool care pickups — not to mention we added a new puppy (hello post-puppy depression that I have thankfully now recovered from!) — and my husband’s own frequent work travel left me with the mindset of “I’m just going to do the best that I can here until we figure out a routine…someday.”

So, I did the best I could. It wasn’t perfect by any means, including a few poorly timed melt-downs of my own as I sat restless wanting to DO IT ALL, but knowing I couldn’t. I had to wait.

So, I’ve been waiting for this year. This year to shine.

There is never going to be any perfect timing to do what you’ve always wanted to do. So give yourself permission to finally say, “it’s time.”

These last few weeks, I have been feeling a renewed energy I haven’t experienced in awhile. Could it be that I’ve been eating “clean” on my own Whole 30/paleo-ish meal plan for almost nineteen days now? Maybe.

In any case, I’m ready. I’m ready for 2017 and the gifts that God has in store for this year. So, let’s do this!

How I’m Using PowerSheets This Year

I’m using the One-Year PowerSheets workbook for my overall life goals – this includes personal goals and some business goals at a very high level. New this year, I’m also using a Six-Month Undated PowerSheets workbook specifically for my business goals. (As a member of the Cultivate/Southern Weddings team, we also use the One-Year PowerSheets for our goals as a team).

2017 PowerSheets Goal Planner Workbook

This may sound like a lot of work/goals to some, but I’m working harder to silo my brain (sounds impossible, right?) so I can work with information easier and not feel so scattered and distracted.

After hearing my friend Tonya Dalton speak at Inspired Retreat about this, I’ve found it really does help me to separate out the different parts of my life (i.e. all my personal emails now are funneled to a personal “family” email account and I keep my business email strictly for business correspondence, work email only for work, and so forth). This way, I can keep me focused on one category of my life at a time. For a gal who was diagnosed with ADHD almost two years ago (story for another day), this has been hugely helpful to me in feeling less all over the place.

Alright, back to the goals!

First, you should know, PowerSheets are much more than a planner. The prep work to create your goals for the year is some of the best work you’ll do. There are lots of questions and exercises to get to the root of what things are holding you back from moving forward, and also the “why” behind what we really want to make happen in our life. I love this work. I love going back to it throughout the year to see how my thoughts and feelings have changed or improved.

My Why page in my PowerSheets:

PowerSheets prep work

The over-arching themes I found in my prep work that helped me prepare my goals for 2017:

I need to love myself well.
This goes beyond the idea of “self-care” that I’ve struggled with for years. (Example: I finally used a spa gift certificate in December that was gifted to me when my daughter was born three years ago). This is more than “losing weight” that I again, have struggled with for years. This is about loving my body that God has given me. This is about changing the way I talk to myself. This is about feeding it well and getting it moving so I can be strong, active, happy.

I need to make time for my business and take action on some long-held ideas and dreams for it.
Quite frankly, 2016 was a confidence builder in what I did pour into my work as a member of a team, as host of Inspired Retreat, and in consulting here and there for other creative businesses. I didn’t realize I was needing some sort of self-confirmation that proved I really did know a lot about marketing strategy, but I did. I received it ten-fold and now I feel that it’s time to use the gifts in bigger ways and help impact more people with my business!

I need to have more fun and lighten up a bit with my family.
My husband said it best when he jokingly called me out on a recent day where I “velociraptor-ed” my way through the morning. I resonated so much with the book, Present Over Perfect. I can be often giving my best self to everyone else in the day, and leaving the tired leftovers for my family. I’m seeking out more adventures and joyful days not only with my family, but for myself, too. (Example, I’m headed out to California for Alt Summit at the end of this month, and I’m staying an extra day to drive to my childhood home and neighborhood in Orange County seeing old friends from decades ago, as well as staying one night in a beachfront AirBnB, all in the name of adventure!)

ali edwards quote

(source: aliedwards.com)

This all leads me to my 10 Goals for 2017 along with a few ideas I have for monthly goals or tending list items to support them:

My Ten Goals for 2017

Love myself and my body well.

– Run a 5k
– Commit to goal of 12 bootcamps/gym classes per month
– Learn meditation/incorporate daily stillness
– Morning affirmations

Choose joy-filled activities and say YES to adventures, new opportunities to live “wide.”

– Create seasonal bucket lists
– Sign up for a new workshop or class (for fun!)
– Work remote monthly in new places around town
– Create (Illustrated Faith, scrapbooks, crafts with kids)
– Teach/Lead a creative workshop
– Explore locally with the family

Renewed focus and intentional time on Amber Housley – the business.

– Schedule my batch days (more like “batch nights” and “batch early mornings”)
– Automate/Systemize/Simplify
– Schedule overnight AH solo-retreat to work on large batch of content
– Create 2017 plans: goals (done!) / content plan (in progress!) / growth plan

Delight in my role and responsibility as a mother.

– Sign up Kayla for dance/gym class and enjoy the opportunity to do this! (done!)
– Listen to podcasts that speak to this area (God Centered Mom, etc)
– Monthly crafts with kids & cooking themes
– Attitude of gratitude
– Create family photo albums

Cultivate a thankful heart and home.

– Create family gratitude jar
– Send weekly happy mail to friends/family
– Order prayer and gratitude journal
– Find a service project we can do as a family

Flourish in faith.

– Join a new bible study with a friend
– Attend our church’s women’s retreat this Spring
– Learn more about prayer
– Write the Word/Illustrated Faith
– Be baptized

Intentionally help plan our family’s legacy.

– Complete Couples Companion Guide to PowerSheets
– Sign up for Financial Peace University (done! we’re joining our neighbor’s small group this week!)
– Create our budget
– Create our wills
– Set short term and longer term financial goals
– Refine our family’s mission statement and post it in our home
– Implement routine meetings

Invest in strengthening and deepening my relationship with my husband.

– Continue monthly date nights
– Reread Power of a Praying Wife (in progress!)
– Encouraging notes
– Listen regularly to marriage podcasts

Simplify our home and daily life.

– Weekly Meal Plan
– Cancel unnecessary apps/utilities/etc.
– Schedule all of our medical appointments, etc. for the year
– Clean-up computer’s Dropbox and uncover the mysteries of “the cloud”
– Monthly donations/purge
– Transfer 10+ years of digital photos out of Iphoto, etc., purge, create one new edited library

Read 12 books that contribute to the progress of these above goals.

– Start a book club in Inspired Creative Biz Facebook Community(more on this next week!)
– Go through my bookshelf and Kindle for all books in progress or unread to see how they fit above themes (done!)
– Read one a month!

One of my favorite activities to do is to pull together a vision board for the year. Last year, I created an 18×24 collage poster I had printed through PersnicketyPrints.com. (Perfect timing, they are having a sale this week where they are $10 off!).

Most of my images are from Pinterest and represent some of my goals visually. I also like to incorporate in some positive messages and images that represent how I want to feel in the year to come.

A peek at this year’s vision board. I should have the printed copy next week to hang on the wall next to my computer!

My Vision Board for 2017

Amber Housley 2017 Vision Board Collage

I’ll be sharing my goal planning for my business in an upcoming post, but in the meantime, I’d love to know what your word is for 2017!

Be sure and drop it below in the comments (if you have a link to your vision board or PowerSheets blog post, I’d love to see it, too!) and I’ll pick a random winner on January 27th to mail a little Cultivate goodie package to!

*Disclaimer: Some of the above links may contain affiliate links for which I may receive a small compensation for referring you. The opinions I share here are entirely my own, and in no way influence my recommendation. My goal here is to share with you what I love and what I use so that you may enjoy, too!