2026 - The Year of the Soft Life
- Samira B
- Jan 2
- 4 min read
Hi loves!
I wanted to share with you all one version of my vision board for 2026 and discuss the process of creating this and how I'm making sure 2026 is my best year yet. Yes, you heard that right, one version. I have a version for my laptop lock screen, laptop home screen, and a printed poster version of it. They all have the same base, but the latter two have a few added elements to help pull everything together.
Let's start with how I made this vision board because it was definately a multistep, multiday process. First, I started with a journal reflection on what this past year has been like for me. What goals did I reach bs what goals should I be bringing into the new year with me? What worked for me and what didn't? I did a post not too long ago entitled Preparing for 2026, which talked about a lot of the reflection I ended up doing in order to make this happen, if you want to check that out. Regardless, after that reflective period, I went ahead and picked out my theme for 2026: Peace. Focus. Discipline. This theme is what I used to root all of my goals in. They should either contribute to my peace, my discipline, my focus, or all three. It's also how I want to make decisions throughout the year. From there, I split up all the goals I had in mind into categories: Finance, Academic and Career, Personal Development + Mental Wellness, Reading, Health + Wellness, Organization + Discipline, and Social + Relationships. Between these categories, I have a total of 19 goals for the year. Some of them may seem unrealistic, while others are rather simple, and that's entirely unintentional.
From there, I went on to consider what monthly, weekly, and daily actions I could take to achieve those goals. Then I thought about systems I could set in place to help make sure I complete those actions becuase as much motivation as I have now, I've seen firsthand how the momentum of a new year can wear off. I started with one of my favorite things back in November: a spreadsheet! I included a finance tab, a habit tracker, and nood tracking. The goal was to start in December to get into the habit of using it, to nobody's surprise. Despite the effort I put into it, I used it 0 times.
Luckily for me, I bought a table for black friday, and the same day, I spent hours on canva putting together a bullet journal. It's almost 200 pages, including places for me to write daily gratitude and points of pride, a habit tracker, and a finance tracker. I started using it on Monday, December 29, and I've been pretty consistent. So that's exciting. Also in the bullet journal are all of my goals, a place to do monthly mood boards, as well as yearly and monthly bingo boards. The bingo boards are to help me stay on track, but also have fun, and engage in hobbies. I think that sometimes when we think about a 2026 rebrand, we talk a lot about productivity, but we don't talk about how we will enrich our lives in fun ways. That's also why I included pictures of myself on the vision board; each one was from an outing that I had where I had fun, felt confident, and looked damn good.
In addition to my vision board being everywhere, and my bullet journal, I set up my physical calendar, Google Calendar, and pomodoro app. For my physical calendar, I included important dates for school, the year, birthdays, monthly to-dos, and weekly resets. On my Google calendar, I put just the important dates, and I'll likely add due dates for school, and whatnot. I like having things in Google Calendar so I can get digital reminders on my phone (I'm pretty much always on my phone) and watch (nearly always wearing her). Lastly, in my Pomodoro app, I put my monthly, weekly, and daily tasks in with subtasks, scholarships I plan to apply to, tasks for my book, and even a place to put all the tasks for my classes. I put a widget on the home screen of my tablet and my phone for these tasks, so I'm always seeing them.
For me, all these steps are leaning into the focus and discipline part of the year's theme. Everything I need to do to reach my goals as well as my goals themselves are right in front of my face constatly. But how does a soft life fit into all of this? I was wondering the same thing at first, but then I realized - the soft part, is making sure that I'm taking care fo myself emotionally, and I had already included a few goals that contributed to that, like daily journaling and meditation, setting/enforcing boundaries, monthly, weekly and daily reflections to check in with myself and how I'm feeling. I even allowed myself softness just yesterday by allowing myself to feel, to cry.
I'm excited for the year, now just for the goals I've set for myself, but also for the unexpected. I have a deep belief that this year ... will be the best yet.
kisses,
samira <3
Comments