 so this is going to be my first video for my living and my purpose series. I have changed up the title a little bit more so that it's not duplicating other people who have done similar series. So a disclaimer before I get started. This is more of a journey, me documenting my journey into finding my purpose in life. As I mentioned in my 2018 goals video, I am going to be walking into my purposes here. I'm claiming it. The past few years have been a cluster of fullery in my life chaos and so I feel like I'm in a point to where I really do want to be walking into what I've been created for which I think a lot of us are looking for. So this is a journey. This is not a how-to for you but perhaps you can gather some tips out of this series and it's going to be about eight videos I think. In total I'm going to be covering some things that are going to be in the other videos. Second disclaimer, this is going to be from a Christian perspective. So if that's not your cup of tea girl, you may not want to be following this my journey. But since I am a Christian, I've really been on this journey of not only writing down my goals but praying over my goals, finding scriptures that align with my goals. I really do think that as long as you are breathing that there's a purpose for you. And I don't think that we are and I want to be careful about this because I do think that God wants everyone to be happy and there's a lot of churches that preach against not necessarily prosperity but you need to be suffering and poor. I don't think that's what I don't think that's necessary. I think that God wants us to be prosperous. However, I also think that he wants us to be humbled and to honor him and I think that's why a lot of, not a lot, I think that's where some people fall off on. Let me get to the point. I honestly do believe they were put on this earth to serve others. I think there is a way to make money from serving others. I think there is a way to help yourself while helping others. Does that make sense y'all? So yes, I do want to say that my Bible is going to be the number one resource I'm pulling for from. So anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. Like I said, girl, if it's not your cup of tea, if you want to look at something, go right ahead. No hard feelings. Everyone's open to do whatever they want. So anyway, let's just jump right into the how. How am I going to figure out what I've been put on this earth for and what I should be doing. There's so much information out there y'all. There is so, everyone's a guru. Everyone can tell you everyone's a mentor, right? Everyone has these little workshops, these little ebooks, you know, there's tons of groups. And I'll honestly, I could spend months pinning articles, looking at blogs, reading blogs, but at a certain point, you have to start taking action. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to stop looking at, you know, looking for resources, but you gotta start doing something, you know. So I have spent a good two and a half weeks looking at resources, pinning stuff. And then finally, finally, I had to stop. I'm like, okay, girl, you need to start working. And I wrote my goals based on my vision board. Okay. And for me personally, my goals, hopefully will align me up to what my purpose is, but but it's not just my goals to be going over a couple of things that I'm going to be doing within this series or journey, I should call it a journey. I'm going to be doing in this journey what I have been doing. But before I get into that, I'm gonna give you guys want to give you guys a little bit of background on me because I don't feel like you guys really know who I am. I mean, you see my hair videos, you see my vlogging, but you really don't know who I am and, you know, my background. So I'm not gonna give a lot of information, girl. Y'all could be like the FBI CIA. So so I was actually born in Columbus, Ohio. My parents were not married when they had me. They were fairly young. My mom is only 20 years younger than I older, excuse me, than I am. They weren't married. So her family is very old school, very traditional, and they sent her away to have her baby to have me up in Ohio with her older sisters. I was raised in Texas. Everyone moved she moved back to Texas after that. She was living in Texas. My father was in Texas, East Texas, excuse me. Longview, Texas to be exact. So I was even though I was born in Columbus, I was essentially raised in Texas. I'm a proud Texan. Look, people from Texas, we view Texas as its own separate country. There's all of y'all and there's Texans. So I went to school and all everything in Texas and all that. I was a very shy child. Actually, I was a shy adult up until my late 20s, which I'll get into how I broke out of that sort of kind of very, very by the book child. My mom said I was a good discipline child. Yes, I had my issues girl when I was like five or six years old. But overall, I was a relatively easy child. I was a type of teenager that I didn't do things that all the other girls were doing. I didn't get my first boyfriend until after I graduated from school. I was very focused in school, very, very focused, very goal oriented. And that was just who I was. I was a very to-do-less person. I mean, my mom told me when I went off to college that she found all these random to-do lists for when I was a preteen and teenager. So that's just just that's just who I am. And that's just how I was. Went to college when I was 17, went to University of North Texas. I initially had, girl, my initial major was cytotechnology. Yeah, then that changed to medical technology and I couldn't pass organic chemistry. I met my husband. Yeah, that's how long I've known him. He was trying to help me as my tutor. Changed my major to anthropology my junior year. Yeah, changed my major to anthropology. My goal was to do public health as a major master's excuse me and that didn't work out either. So anyway, graduated from 2002 with a degree in anthropology. Okay, worked odd-inch jobs. You know, I was doing office work. Let me back up. I was working while I was in college. I literally had two or three jobs. I was young. I was 17, 18 years old. I could have the energy to do, you know, to work two or three jobs, odd-inch jobs. I continued to work after college odd-inch jobs. But then I started to think, Okay, Vivian, if you want to get a master's degree, and if you want to be more open, you're going to have to find some type of job that will get those people skills and that will force you to be open because I was an extreme introvert. I mean, yeah, I would not talk to people at all. So I decided to get a job as a bank teller. I got a job as a bank teller. I got a job as a receptionist at a Jewish community center, the Jewish community center, excuse me, in Dallas. And so that forced me to talk to you as a bank teller. You have to talk to people. So that kind of brought out my personality a little bit more. Years passed on, years passed on. One of my first corporate jobs was as a project coordinator. I gained a lot of experience as a project coordinator. I was 22, 23. And I then just began working my way up until I finally was like, Look, I want to get my master's degree. I want to get it in public health. About a time then I had moved out here to Arizona and there the only public health school was miles away. I wasn't really into doing an online school at that time. So getting my master's degree fell off the radar because I was just working, working and having fun. I was in my 20s. I decided that I want to find a job at University of Phoenix. University of Phoenix was huge at the time was really huge out here. So I'd mentioned we got a job at University of Phoenix. I took a pay cut to just to get my foot in. And my goal was to get my masters and have them basically to be paying for my master's because while you're working there, your school is free. So that's what I did all to me. I got my master's in human dynamics. About two years into working for University of Phoenix, I approached a the learning management system director and I was like, so what exactly do you do? And she told me all that she does yada, yada, yada. And I remember telling her this was how confident I was back then. I told her I said, I want your job. And she looked at me without blanking and blinking, excuse me. She's like, you can have my job one day. And from then on, we we and I still keep in contact with her actually, we're Facebook friends. From then on, she just kind of started mentoring me. And I got on her team. I became a learning management system administrator. I began learning a lot about learning systems and adult learning. So now I've been at my company, I'm at now, which is a healthcare IT company for going on six years, started off as a learning management system administrator, slowly worked my way over into my my official title is now application administrator. Okay, so now I'm at this standstill because up until basically the last six years, I've been working my way up. I've been gaining more skills. I had my child has been busy with JB. I had some medical issues. But now I feel like I need to go ahead and figure out what I want to do even if I continue to have any type of because you're going to have things that happen in life. JB is going to be JB. My husband is going to be going, you know, going crazy too. So I just can't let or allow things in my life to postpone me from figuring out what I want to do. So anyway, I want to give you guys a brief of that. One of the series is going to be about fears. What do I fear? What makes me uncomfortable? And what can I do to let me back up? Let me get into uncomfortable situations. And one of the things that makes me uncomfortable, I can tell you this right now is taking on something that I'm not familiar with. And my job is reporting. So when someone has something that deals reporting, I tell them I pass them off to someone else. Oh, no, girl. Or it could be something like public speaking. And public speaking was one that I was very fearful of. I remember when D of newbie and glam rocks came to me was like, I want you to do a workshop. I'm like, girl, we don't do workshops. But I forced myself to do it. I was very nervous. My first workshop in public speaking. But after that, I am cool with it. So yeah, outlining my fears and how I plan on tackling them and getting comfortable with the things I'm afraid of doing. Okay. What else? What else? What else? Working through my worksheets, writing a vision statement. That's going to be a separate video. Finding a mentor. It doesn't have to be. Well, I think that one or two of them need to be someone I can actually talk to. But then researching people who I admire. I think that's really important. I'm free and not trying to copy what they do. But what inspired them and what got them going? I do have two people here in the valley who I consider mentors. And I would definitely be hitting them up, you know, to have lunch together just to draw from them, you know, I think it's important at any age to have mentors creating a vision board. That is something I actually just I started gathering some images. And so yeah, I'll be documenting that. And I'll have probably about three or four videos where I'm just checking in to let you guys know how things are going. My setbacks. I know there's gonna be setbacks. I'm not gonna sit up here in front and be like, oh, yes, girl, I met all my goals and everything's perfect. I lost 50 pounds. Yeah. No. So yeah, about three or four videos where I'm checking in. So let me go ahead and share with you guys some things I've already started doing and what's been working so far. I haven't had a few things that really hasn't been working. And then I'll also be sharing with you some books, articles, and some people who I've been following to try to help me to get focused. That's a really big for me is staying focused. My mind goes 100 miles per hour. You guys see it even in my blogs. I change topics like this. But when it comes to my goals, I really need to horn down and get focused. So first thing first, my planner. I have this basic planner by Studio C that I got from Walmart. It was like $5, $6. I purchased a planner. I purchased a blank notebook pad. And I have another planner here just in case, you know, just in case. But let me show you guys what this planner looks like. And I love it. It says make today count. I love this planner. So here you can see that I have a special area for dates, birthdays, area for goals, and then to do don't forget, you know, reminders. And then I have this blank page over here where I've been writing jotting things down like my ideas for YouTube videos. And whenever I do something, I go ahead and line it out. Now for the days itself, or I should say next up is the month and my month layout is basically for appointments. Appointments, that goes here. And then for my day, I may have appointments down here. I may have to-do lists. But what I have been doing was writing down a bunch of stuff like four or five tasks. What I started to do like this week, three tasks a day. I have three priorities a day. My to-do lists are no longer going to be six or seven, eight. I mean literally some days it would be like six things I needed to do throughout the day. Whether it be calling to make an appointment, verifying paperwork, you know whatever, getting my car wash, no. Three tasks a day. My aim is to complete all three, but if I don't, I need to complete all three. If not, if there's one left over, I roll it over to the next day. So another thing is I utilize my phone big time. There are applications out there for goal set and appointment reminder tasks. I've used those, but I always go back to writing it down. What I use my phone for is my calendar. My eye calendar. Now my calendar is after, which I know most people are by now, with my calendar on my laptop. So sometimes when I'm speaking to someone on the phone, I'm literally making the event, I call it the event, the calendar event, a notification right there on my phone. If it's a new address, I plug in the location. I plug in any additional information. Now most of those calendars, this is stuff you guys probably already know, but this keeps me sane and organized. Most of your calendar notifications will give you a 15 minute reminder. No girl, I need a few hours. So I would literally make a reminder either two days before or a day before that, hey, you have an event coming up in two more days or JB has a dentist appointment on Saturday just to keep me organized. Okay. Sorry, you guys. I had to close the light because of the glare. Not only that, but January has been absolutely hectic for us as a family. I had to pull JB out of his old school. JB is my child, excuse me, my four-year-old. I had to pull him out of his school and put him in additional school. And so literally all month long has been absolutely hectic. You know, with him being home with me, I do work from home. However, he's four years old and it was a bit much. So he, we just found a school last week and he started school this week, but our schedules are, his schedule was different. Basically, I'm losing three hours. You know, he used to go to school nine hours, but this school is only for six hours. So yeah, that's three hours and I'm losing. So now I really have to be mindful of my time. So what I started to do is look at my morning routine. What can I absolutely push squeeze into an hour and hour and a half? So what I had to do was really narrow down on the things that I want to complete before he wakes up because once he wakes up, he's he's five years old. So yeah, he's running around. He's talking a lot, girl, and talking loud. So what can I get done within an hour to myself? I mean, yes, absolutely. Once I get to my after school, I have myself. But when I get him off to school, that's when I start to work. Okay, I start to work. I do household stuff, but what can I do within my morning? So I have to change up my morning routine quite a bit actually. So now I wrote it all down. I know you guys can't see it. I'm not going to cover everything, but now in the morning, I absolutely make sure that I pray. I drink water. Sometimes I drink it with lemon water. I go ahead and I visualize my day. How do I want my day to look like? What do I need to get done today? I go ahead and write down my three priorities. Sometimes I do the three priorities the night before also. I take my vitamins, I drink a smoothie. Okay, so let's get into some books and articles and other resources that I've pulled to help me with this journey. So the first thing, one of the first thing I did was create a board on Pinterest and I'm going to pull up my Pinterest for you guys and I actually was in it today. I love Pinterest. I use Pinterest for everything, girl. Food is the main thing. So I created a and I know you guys really can't see that. I created a board called Goals 2018 and within that board, I started looking up or pinning items that related to my goals. So I pinned Learning Six Sigma, Lean, The History of LMS. I have on here ways to learn faster, um, baptism covenant because I am getting baptized. That's one of my goals was to get baptized. So the great thing about Pinterest too is that you visually you can see it. Okay, I can create sections. So if I wanted to organize all of my career career goals in the one section, I could do that. Um, you know, the spiritual goals in the one section, I could do that. So yes, I would definitely recommend Pinterest. Alright, so as far as some books here, I have a couple of books I want to show you first book. It's a holy book. I have a Living and the Word Study Bible. I love this Bible, you guys. I love this Bible short story. I used to be a hospice volunteer and the very last patient who was just actually around the corner for me, um, she recommended this Bible to me and that was six years ago. Um, she passed away like a couple of weeks after that, but she, um, had Alzheimer's. She, her short-term memory was horrible, but long-term memory. Oh baby, she knew everything and it's funny. She was from Texas. She knew exactly where Longview, Texas was at and yeah, I loved her. Anyways, so yes, I love this study Bible. It has articles in it and so one of the articles that I'm definitely going to be reading up on there's an article here on gifts, the well of God, and the heart, uh, relationship to the world, so forth and so on. So I'll be putting, by the way, I'll be putting all the, the articles and books that I'm covering. I'll be linking everything down below just in case you guys want to reference that. Um, second up is this book by Rick Warren, which is very, very popular. Number one in the New York Times, best-selling author. Um, what on earth am I here for, the purpose-driven life? Absolutely love this book. I am almost halfway through. I am finding that by day 17, he's really getting into fellowship, being around others, which is really hard for me you guys to do as an introvert. Um, I wouldn't say it's hard to do. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't necessarily make it hard, but yes, there's, there are, uh, almost like worksheets or questions at the end of every article that you have to read. And I've enjoyed this so far. What else? Um, I purchased this last year. This is by a fellow YouTuber and her name is Angelica Duncan. And this is Discipleship Essentials Prayer. Basically getting the best out of praying. Um, it comes with a worksheet. Okay. And seeing along with the books, I have Great Work, Great Career by Stephen Covey. Franklin Covey is, um, a, I don't know if they have any stores still open here, but they sell great planners. Then I have here, you've already got it, so quit trying to get it by Andrew Womack. He is, um, the son of a famous preacher. How we learned by Benedict Cary. So these are very, all very random books. So again, they're aligned with my, um, with my goals. Now as far as worksheets and articles go, through my Pinterest board, I have penned a couple of worksheets and questions to start asking myself to narrow down. I thought I did. Yeah, here we go. 26 questions to help you know yourself better. You know, questions like what, what matters the most to me? What are my short term goals? What are my values? Um, 20 creative exercises for finding purpose and passion in life. And also I discovered, which I'm pretty sure I've ran across her before, Rosetta Thurman, the happyblackwoman.com. She has a life mapping workbook that I have printed out. Um, and I will be going through this within the next week or so. Before we go into February, I would definitely be going through this. And um, is this the same thing over and over? It sure is. Oh no, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. Okay. And she's, she has, I love this. Love this, love this, love this. In addition to that, Erica Jackson, I met this young woman years ago at a women's convention here in Phoenix. She is phenomenal. And I started reading a lot of her, um, online articles in her blog actually a couple of years ago. Way, like before I even had, JB, almost seven years ago. But she also has some, um, uh, books, ebooks that you can purchase. And so I purchased about three of them from, from her. I purchased these books two years ago. Yeah, I should have been reading them a long time ago. But now I'm ready. I'm going to be reading her articles and um, excuse me, and her books. Okay. So besides that, I am in two or three online Facebook groups. I'm a lurker, you guys. And I have to get out the habit of that. So I am in the happy black woman group. I'm in a networking group here locally. Um, that's another thing that I do plan on doing is networking a little bit more. That's not necessarily a fear of mine, but that's uncomfortable for me to do stuff like that. Um, I'm going to get some business cards. I have some, but I'm going to update those business cards. Yeah. So that's a hot you guys. I know it seems like a lot. I don't feel overwhelmed because I am happy and ecstatic to get started on this. Um, but my next, I think my next video will be about fears because you have to start tackling those because if not, I won't be able to get through this. You see what I'm saying? So going over fear is what makes me uncomfortable. Lining that out. I will go ahead and go through this life mapping workbook. Um, my goal is to, uh, read. I'm a fast reader, so there's no excuses why I haven't read any of the books that I've been trying to read. What I've been doing you guys is that you have to create short-term goals or little tasks to sing on track, right? So the next goal is in what's in the, in May and that's to narrow down my career field and I have a little task up underneath on how to do that. So I would definitely considering when, like I mentioned in the 2018, the previous video, I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven goals here. When you write down your goals, and I know I'm kind of backtracking, but I just want to say this, when you put down your goals, I have seven goals. Don't have two goals listed for the month of May. You want to, you know, space out your goals. And if you have a goals that have a lot of tasks, like which one do I have a lot of tasks? Paying off my credit card. My credit card is like $900. I know that I'm not going to have that credit card paid off by May. So I have a deadline here of November. So yes, you guys, that is it. Let me know if you have any suggestions for on articles or blogs. I could read books. I'm good on books, girl. I'm really good on books, but, or if you know if you need Facebook groups, I should be joining. Like I said, I'll be trying to include everything that I've mentioned in this video down below. So that's it, you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Take care. Bye.