Once you know your dreams you have to pick a dream to focus on. If you didn’t get a chance to read “Choosing Your Destination: Intentional Planning Part 1” you can click here to read it before delving into this next step. It is important that you choose your destination before you pack for the destination.

For example, if your destination is the top of a mountain and you plan to hike there, you will need rope, nutritious snacks, good hiking shoes, a navigation tool, and a travel buddy to keep you company. If you are going to Lake Tahoe to ski, you will need winter clothes and a pair of skis, or money to rent them. If you are going to New York to enjoy theatre life and shopping, you will want to take some cute outfits and a pair of heels, some cash, and an extra suitcase to bring all the things back from the shopping spree. As you can see, each one of these destinations have very different essentials needed.

So, what destination/dream did you choose? Whatever that thing (or things) is that motivates you, that is where your packing plan begins.

Let’s go back to one of the destinations I chose in the last blog: Destination Family Health and Wellness. I can say all day long this is where I want to arrive, but if I don’t intentionally make an action plan I will get stuck in the dreaming phase and never see my health and wellness become a reality in my family.

For my Family Health and Wellness, I made a few decisions for the New Year. I decided that we needed to change our diet and to do so we needed a reset button after the holidays. So I did some research and picked the Whole 30 diet because it seemed best for the whole family. There was meat and protein allowed for the kids active schedules. There was no sugar which was a must for the reset. There was no gluten which was a must for my one daughter and probably a good cleanse for the rest of us. It was 30 days so it wasn’t forever, but long enough for my family to change their eating habits.

Once I picked what I was going to pack, I knew I had to get all the family members on board or this plan wasn’t going to work when I tried to implement it. I talked to them about health, and energy and why we needed to make changes in our diet. I talked to my husband to make sure he was on board with the idea and willing. He had the same destination as me so he was on board with it.

I also knew that there was a lot of unhealthy food in our cupboards that needed to go, but I didn’t want to throw it all in the garbage so I decided we needed to gradually ease into the diet change. I chose to shop at Aldi’s and Detweiler’s because they had the best price on fresh food and meat.

Once we started the plan, we assessed how we were doing each day or two, and I checked in on the kids self-discipline at school. The ride home from school or the dinner table was a great place for this check in. There were a few failures, but way more successes and we cheered the successes on. 10 days into the plan we decided the kids needed to add in a couple of gluten free grains and some organic milk because they were losing too much energy and my four year old was losing weight so needed a little more filler. We adjusted Whole 30 to fit our needs. Read more on that here.

So let’s review my action plan for the Family Health and Wellness Destination:

  1. Choose diet – Whole30
    1. No gluten
    2. No sugar
    3. 30 day health reset
  2. Get all family members on board with the plan
    1. Explain the reasons for the diet change
    2. Make sure husband was committed and had the same goals/destination I did.
  3.  Clean out unhealthy food and gradually bring in healthy foodClean out fridge
    1. Clean out pantry
    2. Shop at Aldi’s and Detweiler’s for fresh food and meat
  4.  Start 30 day plan and assess the results with the family regularly, changing plan as necessary

We are now about halfway through this plan and some great changes have taken place in our health and wellness. Some much needed weight is coming off, energy is being restored, and toxins are being cleansed from our bodies. There have been major sacrifices made. My husband and I have spent a lot more time in the kitchen cooking, the kids have had more dishes to do, and we have had to say no to a lot of yummy foods. Oh, and we all went through some awful withdrawal symptoms as we got the sugar and processed carbs out of our body. That was torture!

I share all this to say that the plan isn’t always fun to carry out, so the destination has to be in view. There are pit stops along the way, unexpected weather, and traffic. The better the plan is at the beginning, the easier it is to handle the unexpected, and evaluate if the plan needs some readjusting to handle those things.

Think about it: So what is your packing plan? How are you going to get to your destination and who are you taking with you? Are they on board with the destination?

Photo thanks to:

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Written by angela adkins

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