By Kimine Mayuzumi
What kind of summer do you want to have this year?
What many people (including myself) tend to do for planning their summer is to first think about what to do and where to go instead of envisioning their summer as a part of their larger life vision. We tend to rush into making another to-do list and scheduling a few entertainments and/or family events. What’s missing is reflecting on the above question before jumping into our TO-DOs.
There are different ways to look at your summer.
You could have a vision of your summer based on reflecting on the past term. If you had a hardship like a loss of your loved one, burnout, depression, and a tragedy, you may want to consider your summer as a time for grieving, healing and/or rejuvenation.
If you anticipate an overwhelming academic year/term ahead, you may want to restore energy and reserve some time for preparation. For example, if you have to travel a lot during the next term, you may want to enjoy a more relaxing time at home.
If you want to use the summer to follow up on your values and visions, you could plan accordingly. One of your visions might be an exquisite sense of achievement by running for the Boston Marathon in the near future. Then you could use this summer to approach the North Star and run every morning.
Having a vision, imagining what it would look like, feel like and/or sound like, is a salient step for planning. The vision helps guide the “why” for what you plan to do. When you have the “why” picture, your action plan is much more meaningful and sustainable.
In other words, how do you want to feel this summer or at the end of the summer?
Dr. Michelle Boyd calls this a “Forward Feeling Reflection” in our past blog post. She says:
[T]he Forward Feeling Reflection works precisely because it gives you the multiple kinds of information you need to make decisions about what you’ll commit to this (summer): it specifies not just what you would do, but how it would feel, and what you would have to give up in order to get it done.
To make it easier for you to envision first and then plan your summer, here is a resource sheet you can easily fill in. It says “summer planner.” But now that I think of it, it is more like a summer wishlist.
Question 1. How do I want to feel this summer or at the end of the summer?
This first question helps you think of how you want to feel or want to be. Hence, circle the adjectives that match your answers and/or add your own words to describe it.
Question 2. What do I want to do this summer to fulfill these desired feelings?
To answer the second question, there are two columns. The left one (“By myself”) is for things you want to do by yourself. The right one (“With others”) is for the things you want to do with others like your family or friends.
This way, you can use the list in the right column for you to negotiate with the people/person who would be involved in the given activity. Once you have your wishlist created and have decided on which ones you would like to implement, you can then schedule and add them to your planner/calendar.
Another cool thing about this resource sheet is that you can do this exercise with your family or partner. This could become a connecting activity and a basis for negotiation with your loved one(s) to plan this summer. I did this with my family including my partner and children (ages of 12 and 7). We have agreed on a camping trip this summer.
If you want to try this, click here or the below image. Happy summer!
Featured image by Nicolas Jossi on Unsplash