How to Use Vision Tools in January to Grow a Bright Future
This is what I do instead of setting resolutions
On December 16, my toes lost touch with the concrete bottom of a predictable life, and my fingertips won’t feel the smooth tile of the reassuring pool wall until January 6, when the rest of the business world returns to work.
While others may find the sleepy week between Christmas and New Year (or the whole holiday cluster) comforting, I find it disorienting. The time drags. By the third day, I notice my anxiety baseline is up. The holiday weeks, combined with their buffer zones of unproductivity or different productivity, feel like swimming out to the pool's deep end for the first time. Every year, I wonder why I still can’t come to expect it. Why aren’t I more prepared?
With every “end of year wrap up” posted, every list of books read in the previous year, and every “favorites of 2024 recap,” I sink a little further. Those lists and recaps are compiled by people with content planners, I think. People with their act together.
I am not people. There is no act. My content planner is based on current events. When I am together, it’s due to one of two things:
The graceful love of someone holding my flawed yet honest soul or,
a random splash of whimsy interpreted by others as magic.
I am organized but only sometimes, sequential yet roundabout, and strategic when purpose-driven. My system works for me wonderfully until December 16, when the depressurization causes a crash.
It’s over.
No one is going to reply.
You’ll have to wait for the other side to get an answer. You have to wait for Next Year.
That isn’t to say I don’t love the immersion into festive family time and the deviation of routine. I do. But the wibble-wobble boundaries, drafty calories, funky sleep, warm-cold-warm weather, and drain on what has to be an everlasting social battery (it is not) unmoor me.
And that’s just considering the dramatic change in pace. Toss in a few Big Life Plot Twists, and the water level rises.
There are no tethers, ports, or solid spaces around me at the end of each December. As a person who thrives on structure and loves my work and the peace I find within, I get tired of the expansive and floppy freedom. The supposed rest of the “vacation” never settles. I’m impatient and reaching, and sometimes I cry from fatigue.
To resist feeling shame for being out of step with a culture that seems to love this version of “time off,” I’ve had to learn to find comfort in the open swim.
To pace myself as I tread.
But most importantly, I’ve had to learn how to find a tethered mooring inside myself.
Losing external structure lures us toward fundamentalist rules. This is the real “slippery slope” religion warned us about: Without an intentional and internal sense of calm and control, we will slide into old patterns in times of chaos. The holiday openness reminds me of older, disorganized times in my life, when routines were essential stabilizers and when the Big Life Plot Twists overlapped.
My anxiety calms when I apply purpose to my actions, whether that purpose is intentional rest or focused regrouping. One way I cultivate calm in the midst of holiday chaos is by embracing the spirit of January.
It’s more than a month to me; it’s a mindset.
“January” comes from the Latin word “Janus,” the Roman god of transitions and new beginnings. He was also the god of doorways and the rising and setting of the sun.
To the Romans January didn’t just come once every twelve months—it came every day. I’m reminded of what Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote through her beloved character, Anne Shirley, “Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it….yet.” Let the sun set. Let it also rise. Each new day presents us with a doorway.
I love the honesty of that line because we get both in this life: a fresh start every morning and the inevitability of mistakes.
As a Roman deity, Janus was the god who looked at life from both sides now. He saw Yesterday and Tomorrow—a god perhaps not omniscient but with both hindsight and foresight, a mind able to hold two truths at once, and wisdom in the middle.
Let me ask you something. Do you believe your future is bright?
If you’ve read my memoir, A Well-Trained Wife, you know I learned how to vision board before I escaped my husband. That last year with him was as close to hell on earth as I’ve ever lived, and I turned to vision boarding as a feeble reach for a lifeline before I drowned.
It was a strange experience choosing images for a life I knew in my heart I wanted while watching a collage materialize before me that was so different from my reality. There was a disconnect between the two, and I wasn’t sure how to bridge the gap. I knew things would have to change, but I also knew I’d have to grow. Not only was I afraid of that, but I also didn’t know how.
I turned to vision boarding when I wasn’t even sure I had a future because my reality was nearing life-or-death level tension. But I wanted to trust the future could be bright. I wondered if it could be. The vision board was one way I learned to lean into January, and I’ve used it as a lifeline for 16 years. It turns out I have a knack for making my vision boards come true, right on down to my cat, Howard, and my debut as a New York Times bestseller.
Have you been there before? Standing here, but you want to get there, and in the meantime, you’re just flailing or wandering because just about everything around you is out of reach and out of your control? It doesn’t just happen to ADHD types around the holidays, and I bet it even happens to people with their act together, too. When we want a bright future but are mired in a bleak reality, what can we do?
By the way, I have an email series called SHINE that explains vision boarding during trauma healing in detail. You’ll also get tips on discovering your personal speed bumps, claiming your audacity, and how to quit waiting for permission to take up space.
The vision diary was another technique I used to pull myself up, even more effective than a vision board.
In this exercise, I journaled my envisioned future as if it were a diary entry already happening in Ordinary Time. I wrote out this daily diary over and over again until the words began to embed as memory, and choice-making no longer felt radical but natural. Of course, you think as you approach a doorway to a new life. I recognize this option.
Vision diaries are so powerful that I wonder why they aren’t a more popular manifestation and vision-casting tool. But that may be due to fear. Envisioning a new, brighter future comes with the responsibility to answer one's own call to action, which means vision work can be scary.
Here’s another foundational question: Do you believe growth is possible?
Not everyone does, and I get that. Or, they used to, but they’re so beaten down by life, trauma, and circumstance that “growth” is just too much to hope for—in others and in yourself.
When you’ve been repeatedly harmed by people who “refuse to change,” it’s a deeply healing step to draw a line on that say, “I’m not waiting anymore.”
Ironically, that verbalization signals growth for you. Boundary setting and holding reflect stretch, reach, and measurable increase in capacity. Taking your personal power back after victimization evidences a massive internal shift.
But I wonder if we confuse Change and Growth too often. I know from experience how easy it is to project expectations on others after we’ve experienced massive change. After all, if we’ve done it, can’t they, too? Sometimes, we even demand it from them.
Change, used as a synonym for repentance, signals a turning. I once heard it described as an “about face,” a turn in the opposite direction. Personally, repentance is loaded with religious baggage. Repentance is Change in a specific direction: God’s—or at least in the direction of the people who claim to represent God and “His will.”
In my life experience, dramatic about-faces and turn-aways are rare. They certainly aren’t sincere when performed on command, and genuine repentance is a change we make on our own.
A shift might not be a complete turning—at least not yet. Some changes are incremental, such as how an autumn leaf alters from green to gold to brown. Or how a child’s face lengthens from babyhood into youth.
I see growth as different than change. And change is (or can be) different than growth. There’s a verticalness implied with growth. A rotation with change. They’re sometimes synonyms and sometimes companions. Is distance the measure? Circumference? Depth? And why does it matter?
Who can vision cast toward a bright future if they don’t believe growth is possible? What space do we allow for others to grow or change? What does that mean for our relationships?
Do you love someone less when they change? When they grow? When they slowly shift over time, or the opposite—too slowly for you? Is your love dependent on their change? What about your proximity to them and your involvement?
These are not new questions. Shakespeare wrote: “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
These questions are hard to answer, particularly through a trauma lens, and your answer may change over time and according to the player. There are those I’ve loved less when they refused to change, and there are those who loved me less when I grew. The answers impact my vision for Tomorrow.
You're not alone if your trust in the growth process is deflated. The drain of a capitalist, money-driven, technology-flooded, lonely, high-control life spent in a patriarchal culture can feel like it caps growth. Stunts you like Chinese foot binding to make feet stay small.
If you stay locked up and in long enough, you might have forgotten how to grow, or maybe growth becomes malformed. When we leave high-control religion, it’s so we can break free.
But what if we don’t feel free? Or the people we leave behind don’t change? What does that mean for our vision of the future and the reality we dream of manifesting?
This tension is part of January. It’s why we need the value of hindsight and foresight, with a pause for wisdom, grace, and consideration in between.
I can tell you this: January comes to me in the midst of an annual unraveling, and it always comes with fire. I believe in growth, and that my future is bright, and that the brightness I’m seeking sparks with the fire I hold inside of me.
A January fire longs to burn what’s dead, not merely dormant. I need to get fired up about something I want to change to take action on anything. Without that fire, nothing is happening.
I’m working on my second book, The Soul of Healing, and (spoiler alert!) the cover involves a phoenix. When I feel my fire rise, it’s like that bird, and I’m prompted to defend, protect, explore, wonder, discover, and grow. There’s a critical stage to this fire.
I honor my healing when I don’t tamp my fire down but let the heat of my soul glow.
When I stare into the flames to find what causes the fire to rise,
When I name what stokes my rage,
When I settle on that which allows me to sigh into embers,
When I find will and hot air beneath my wings to fly.
Incidentally, these situations are all shamed in high-control environments—and surprisingly, in unhealed people who carry remnants of their high-control past on their lips and in their eyes. The patriarchy does not want women stoking their rage or flying free, fed by their inner fire. It’s an act of rebellion to sit and wonder those questions. Tolerance of what the answers disturb is an act of fierce deconstruction. Examine these particles. Sweep them. Allow for the paradox of clarity that finds you in the middle of the clouded storm.
How do you know what to change and what to leave be? I go by heat.
When I have no fire, I’m hardened and cold, perhaps dormant, sleeping or waiting, and growing glacially—like a rock. The lithification of my solidified disappointments can remain in place for an era, slowly increasing in mass as time passes. I may even barely notice how little change is occurring. I am an iceberg; if accretion is underway, it’s too slow for me to care.
But experience has taught me that water and heat will come. What chilled and hardened me is hindsight; what busts me open is the freedom of foresight. The difference between them is a spark of emotion that lights a fire inside of me. January holds space for it all.
This fire is why I don’t waste time setting resolutions, choosing a word for the year, or carefully planning my goals. I need an inner spark to grow, and I’m not sitting around waiting for it. I cultivate an environment for growth on purpose. I go looking for it. I dig, provoke, and “say the thing out loud,” trying to stimulate it. This is why I get squirrely when the American calendar determines we should sit down and rest until some arbitrary date on the calendar signals us all back to work. I’m eager for the discovery that comes with the burn.
Growth is nature’s way. Growth is my way, too. Is there anything more anti-fundamentalist than growth and expansion that burns from a fire within? I don’t think so.
During my two-part interview with Glennon, Abby, and Amanda on the We Can Do Hard Things Podcast. Glennon happily commented that I often say about myself in the third person: “She grew.”
I felt grateful she picked up on that because my growth is hard-fought and deeply cherished, and I’m tearfully thankful for the people in my life who allow me to be the pliant, learning, wending, reaching, attached vine that I am. My growth has helped me bust through barriers like a weed through concrete, accomplishing things that younger me only dreamed were possible.
Do you want to grow like that, too?
Begin with foresight. Imagine what your heart loves and what it’s like to live there.
Then, contrast that future with your hindsight. Where are you from? Where are you now?
Measure the distance between them. That’s how far you have to go.
To get there, look with hindsight at Yesterday—the day, the month, the year, the life. Find the discomforts. Name them. Scream them into the wind if you need to.
What do you want to change so badly that you never live another second of your life within that mindset?
Then, instead of tamping down your fire, let it breathe.
Let your vision rise.
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Thanks Tia. So much here to ponder. I recently heard someone explain a better definition of the word repent. It means something like return back to the One mind. Like the cosmic mind or Source.
I love this. I never liked resolutions, but I enjoyed thinking about where I wanted to be in a year and where/how I wanted to see myself in the future. When I look back at where I was to where I am, I think I've traveled far, or sometimes, in some years, not far at all. I also get antsy at this time of year with all the time off.