Personal Growth
How to Scrapbook Your Goals
Get your goals out of your head and on paper
Scrapbooking started as an activity for the new year and quickly became a therapeutic practice for me. Although I struggle to stay interested in things like puzzles or coloring when processing ideas or my emotions, I can wait focused on scrapbooking. It is the excitement of controlling and creating a page from scratch rather than forcing my brain to follow a predesigned pathway. When I am scrapbooking, I am in the driver's seat, and I have the power to design whatever I feel in the moment or focus on a specific topic, like my goals.
If you are familiar with my work and brands (like McKissick Health and One Choice Magazine), you know metacognition is my jam. I make it obvious that I geek out over anything rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy and critical thinking. Thinking about thinking is a lifestyle practice for me, including regularly setting goals.
Goal setting is taking active steps to achieve your desired outcome. It falls under the ‘plan the approach’ section in the metacognition cycle and prepares you for taking action. Engaging in scrapbooking is a great way to connect the practical and creative parts of your thinking to develop innovative solutions. Developing creative solutions while planning your goals can look like you set a goal to compete in an Olympic race walk––it is a real thing. To achieve this goal, you could take a creative approach like becoming a dog walker rather than adding ten thousand steps to your exercise routine.
When you create your scrapbook, you can add pictures of dogs and someone winning an award. Seeing this will motivate you to reach your goal more than writing ‘run a marathon’ on paper. Scrapbooking your goals allows you to make planning your life a full-body experience.
Here are a few answers to some of the questions you might consider.
How do I get started?
In the YouTube video “How to Scrapbook,” I tell you two things you must have to start the scrapbook life. That’s a book or poster to paste things on and magazines or newsletters to find clippings to paste. Get more beginner tips in the video.
What should I include?
I typically go with whatever vibe I am feeling at the time. So, if I grab a home and cooking magazine, I will channel my creative energy to focus on scrapbooking things in that category. I will occasionally do multiple pages and themes simultaneously and flip back and forth through them. There is no wrong way to start. Just grab a magazine and start cutting.
How do I pick a theme?
A theme is a descriptive way of saying what each page is about. So, if you give the first page of your scrapbook the theme “rebirth,” you’re probably including clippings that have to do with being born, a makeover, or a new beginning. In the “How to Scrapbook” video, I share pages created to symbolize motherhood, marriage, my journey of self-love, and more.
How does this help me understand my goals?
The truth is it might not. I find it helpful because I am a visual learner, and seeing images that remind me of what I want out of life is helpful and triggers my brain to think strategically about achieving my goals. For you, it may work differently. Perhaps you need to leave a blank page between pages so you can write about your clippings. That is a helpful strategy for remembering why the goals you’ve creatively featured are important. I usually write my well-thought-out reasons in my journal. So when I am scrapbooking, it is strictly for the visual effect.
How is this therapeutic?
Creative expression is a great way to explore mental and emotional processing. You can do many exercises to acknowledge and release your feelings, pursue healing, or cut loose. Here is a populated list of other activities you can try.
Here is a video showing my scrapbook and how I plan my personal and professional goals.
Let me know if you found the video and blog posts helpful by pressing like or sharing them on your social media. Also, tell me some things you do that are therapeutic or help you set positive goals.
