Author: Admin01

I’ve been mulling over something different to do this year on New Year’s Eve. For the past several years, I spent NYE surrounded with old magazines, a large piece of tag board, scissors and tape, constructing a vision board. Many times, I made it a party with friends, happily chatting while we taped pictures of our dreams on tagboard, and when finished, sharing what each picture meant to us. This process set intention for our future, clarifying individual focus for the year ahead.

There’s something powerful about a vision board. The first step to making one could be why. It involves searching the heart to answer the question “What do I really want in the year to come?” This question could be posed in several categories, like finances, homes, relationships or travel. Carefully cut and artfully displayed pictures of what we want on a piece of tagboard seems to cement the answer to that question to give hopes and dreams a solid base to develop into reality.

This Has Been Widely Successful for Me

As I look over vision boards from years past, it’s nothing short of amazing how many happenings and occurrences have lined up to those pictures. I’m humbled and awestruck how this has consistently worked for me and for my group of friends.

(Keep reading to find out the ONE thing that I’ve had on my vision board year after year that has NOT happened in my life. YET.)

Perhaps it’s not about cut out magazine pictures or the words I’ve scribbled around them, or the hope that dreams may come true. The time devoted to contemplating and visualizing what I truly want, is the catalyst that makes this work.This is what it’s all about. By self-reflection and then visualization, I found that I move from vague aspirations to clear, actionable intentions for the year ahead.

Keeping your vision board where you can see it, is part of making goals and dreams come true. The part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) is the brainstem network that acts as your brain’s filter, controlling arousal, consciousness, and attention, prioritizing sensory input and helping you focus.

“By consistently viewing your vision board, you value tag your goals, signaling to your RAS to prioritize your vision board content. This causes you to actively notice opportunities, people and ideas that align with your aspirations.”

Use Your Vision Board to Inspire and Guide Your Actions

Mental Rehearsal and Emotion

Visualizing your goals activates the same areas of the brain as experiencing them, creating a powerful emotional connection. This mental practice can increase motivation and confidence, as your brain begins to believe your goals are possible and even probable.

Motivation and Action

The positive emotions generated from visualizing success, combined with the constant reminder of your goals, can increase your motivation to take action. Seeing your progress can also boost your confidence, helping you to continue working toward your objectives.

A New Practice to Explore

This year on the NYE I will make a vision board, and I’m going to add something new. I’ve been contemplating the value of writing a letter to myself. In this letter, I will jot down how 2025 went, including successes as well as disappointments. The year held so many blessings, small wins, and lessons. It brought some heartaches that are hurtful and vivid.

I may forget about some of these events by the time December 2026 rolls around. In fact, I’m sure I will. Time moves on and so do circumstances, difficulties, successes. Everything will morph into something else after 12 months of moving forward. It will be interesting to read how I felt as this year ended, what impacted me the most, and then read the hopes for the year that were important one year ago. While focusing on the present moment, I’ll be looking ahead to the future year.

How to Write a Year-End Letter

Here’s a few pointers to help you write a letter to yourself.

1. List the fun you had.
2. Write your hopes, dreams, and vision for the year 2026.
3. If you’ve had tragedies or hurts, it’s ok to put them down. Write where each situation is currently – then add where you want them to be by the end of 2026.
4. Remind yourself how much you love you. Give yourself some love.

(As promised earlier in this article, here’s the one picture that I brought forward to a new board year after year. A small bright red Mazda Miata convertible!)

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Will you join me in making a vision board to view all year or writing a letter to yourself to be read one year from today? Have you done either of these in the past? What has made the most impact on your life? Please share the successes you have had with vision boards for inspiration!

I recently watched a podcast with bestselling author and Professor of Psychiatry, Michael Easter, discussing his book, The Comfort Crisis, in which he examines how our physical health and mental wellbeing have evolved as our lives became easier. I find the topic fascinating and satisfying in some ways because it ratifies what I believe.

Living in the Past vs Today

I was raised by first generation Americans, my father’s people lived for generations on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Life was harsh, staples were scarce and food was mostly grown or harvested from the ocean. Most chores were done by hand as fuel was limited and expensive, cooking was mostly over an open fire and people walked or rode animals rather than drive a vehicle.

These people were tough, strong and determined. They had to be to survive. They passed along a resilience to the generations that followed that remains in me, even though I live a modern, comfortable life. I suspect I have been hardwired for hard work and the desire to venture out into nature even when it’s less than pleasant in the winter.

Apparently, this is a good thing. According to Easter, there’s a disconnect between how we evolved up until the 20^th century and how we currently live. We don’t move our bodies as we once did, we don’t strain to lift heavy things, brave winter storms to hunt or gather food, endure spans of time with less than abundant provisions and build fires to stay warm. The majority of us have a thermostat, a car, a cozy bed and restaurants, delivery or a well-stocked pantry that allow us to be sedentary for most of our waking hours.

The Evolutionary Mismatch

Evolutionary Mismatch, defined by Wikipedia, is a biological concept that a previously advantageous trait may become maladaptive due to change in the environment, especially when change is rapid.

Life once took far more effort. Our food was varied, mostly eaten raw, and we usually had to walk a significant distance to find it. Our jaws were strong, our teeth were larger and our gut was filled with bacteria and microbes that turned whatever we found or killed into nutrition. Modern humans have mutated to have smaller jaws with weaker muscles and 70% of the current population are now born with no wisdom teeth. This evolutionary trend has accelerated over the past few centuries as a result of mechanized food production and a diet which is mostly comprised of soft, processed ingredients.

Additionally, our microbiome which is responsible for not only assimilating calories, but producing hormones that regulate a healthy body, has lost much of its diversity, resulting in a dramatic rise in digestive issues, hormonal imbalance and an increase in obesity and heart disease.

We engineered exercise into our lives when survival got too easy and we began to realize the threats to our health. Exercise is good, but we need to weave effort back into our every day. Anthropologists believe an early woman hunter gatherer was four times stronger than a member of the Women’s Olympic Rowing Team is today, a theory that supports Easter’s premise that constant effort matters.

How to Include Effort in Daily Life

Here are a few ideas if you’d like to put a little more effort into your day without adding anything more to your busy schedule.

• Walking to the market or at least parking as far from it as reasonable.
• Carry your groceries rather than wheeling them in a cart.
• Take the stairs rather than the elevator.
• Sweep or rake rather than using the vacuum or the blower.

To bring more effort into your eating habits try:

• Eat less, eat less frequently and allow your food to fully digest before eating more.
• Choose food that challenges your body, whole grains, seeds, fresh fruit and vegetables take longer to digest and feed your microbiome.
• Incorporate more raw foods and chew them thoroughly.

The Advent of a Temperature Controlled Environment

We’ve also evolved to avoid exposure to hot and frigid temperatures, which makes life much more pleasant but requires less from our metabolism to modulate. When we are exposed to cold our body produces not only adrenaline for our heart and muscles to respond to the stress, but norepinephrine, dopamine and endorphins which boost alertness, focus and mood.

There are also some studies reporting cold exposure stimulates brown fat activation, inflammation reduction, improved sleep and stronger immune response as a long-term benefit, all of which contributes to better health and longevity.

According to Easter, the key is to embrace short term difficulty for a long-term benefit, withstanding a little struggle and discomfort in exchange for a healthier, more fit and stronger body and a better quality of life in the long run.

It might be difficult to start, probably a little uncomfortable at times, but with the proper mindset, the benefits will be obvious, as we gain confidence in our ability and become much more capable of facing whatever adversity may come our way in the future.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you think you’re living a life of comfort? What comforts can’t you live without? How much strain and difficulty do you voluntarily include in your days?

What habits do we have, or wish we had? In business or our personal lives, most of our daily actions are completed out of habit without giving them much thought: our morning routine, our drive to work, our bedtime ritual. Have you ever caught yourself driving and asking yourself, did I stop at that stop sign back there? Did I close my garage door as I pulled out of my driveway? Did I lock my car door after I parked my car? Those actions have become so familiar that they have become habits that you do without thinking about them. You’re on autopilot.

Nose Blindness

Our brains are wired for survival, which is why they ignore the familiar in order to focus on what’s new and different. That fact is referred to as “nose blindness.” A few years ago, I designed a workshop called Behavior Change Bootcamp and in it I helped my audience better understand nose blindness with the following example.

Think of the last time you entered a room and smelled baking cookies, or homemade bread, or some other favorite aroma. Minutes later, your nose didn’t detect that aroma anymore. Yet if you left the room and came back into it again, you would smell it again.

That is an example of how nose blindness works, your brain ignores the familiar so it can focus on the new and different instead. It is that exact understanding of how our brain works that we can leverage in both our personal and professional lives to our advantage.

James Clear’s Advice

Take personal finance, for example, since it applies to all of us. If you can do things so routinely that you don’t think about them, voila! You have a new habit! So how do we leverage our brain to help us create good personal financial habits? To avoid the feeling of overwhelm, we need to take James Clear’s advice from his book Atomic Habits and think small. His advice is to break our desired habits into 2-minute actionable steps. By focusing on the system in place, one small step at a time, you end up achieving the overall goal.

My Wish for all Women

Let’s use my wish for all women to walk through an example. I wish every woman had a list of her financial resources; I call it My Net Worth Summary. It reminds you, all in one place, of your blessings and perhaps your challenges. And once it is complete, it also serves as your homework list.

If you tie your 2-minute actionable step to something you enjoy, you will get further faster. If you enjoy a nice cup of coffee, setting out to complete your Net Worth Summary, in 2-minute sittings, can be very doable even if finances aren’t your favorite thing to deal with.

Section One

For example, the first section is Cash, which generally means all accounts at banks or credit unions (or in the freezer or under the mattress!) that are not at risk in the stock market. As you sip your coffee, you fill in the first column with the types of accounts you have, one per line. If you have a checking account at the local bank and one at a credit union, for example, you will write Checking on two lines.

Keep sipping, and the next column has you list the titles of each account, i.e., joint, trust, or your name only and where they are located. Here’s where if you don’t know for sure (don’t guess!), you may take a few minutes to look up that detail on a statement or online.

Then, surprising to some, there is a beneficiary column. You can name a beneficiary (called a POD, Payable on Death) on checking, savings, money market, and CDs at the bank. Perhaps that becomes a homework item for another 2-minute session.

Lastly, finish your coffee as you fill in the Value column with the current approximate balances of the accounts you listed. No math needed, as the worksheet will tally it all for you at the end of the 4 pages. Yeah, one section of eight done!

Free Workshop

Now you can tackle the next section tomorrow! Or sometimes you find that wasn’t so bad and decide to make a little more progress faster by sticking with a small step longer than 2 minutes. Your call. Any progress is further ahead than before you started! I also provide a free video workshop (available on demand) to walk you through filling out the entire worksheet and to help understand the importance of getting the account titles and beneficiary designations correct and complete.

2-Minute Habits

I encourage you to think of every financial task or project in the same way. Just a 2-minute tackle until you complete it over time. Or some healthy financial habits, like reviewing your bank transactions online (for fraud detection as well as reminders of your spending habits), can be done on a regular basis for just 2 minutes at a time, while sipping coffee if you are me!

Let’s Start the Conversation:

What financial projects could you or have you broken down into small tasks? What financial habits could you do regularly for two minutes? And what enjoyable activity could you tie it to (or reward yourself with)? Let’s have a discussion.

For more than a decade, I’ve worked in nonprofit branding – the business of shaping how a product, person, or service is perceived by an audience. It’s a process that’s both strategic and deeply intentional, rooted in understanding what people want, how they feel, and what sparks connection. I’ve spent years mastering analytics and, equally important, honing my intuition. I can read a room and a market, navigate a communications crisis, and build a vision that aligns with an audience’s needs.

And yet, while I help organizations and entrepreneurs present their most polished, purposeful selves, my own personal brand has suffered from a serious lack of attention. Somewhere between raising kids, navigating career climbs, managing a household, and squeezing in the fun side hustles, my personal identity became more accidental than intentional. I stopped asking the foundational branding questions that are second nature in my profession: What’s unique about me? What do I value? What do I want to showcase with the world?

Stepping into all the shifts – some gentle, others massive – that come with a new chapter helped me realize that hitting 60 is the perfect time for a personal rebrand.

Your 60s Are Prime Time for Personal Reinvention

Something rare and wonderful happens when you enter your 60s. Obligations begin to shift. The 9-to-5 is likely winding down or fully behind you. The kids are launched, the calendar opens up, and suddenly what lies ahead looks less like routine and more like possibility.

This stage of life isn’t about hustling for approval or bending toward expectations. It’s about embracing long-awaited autonomy, leaning into curiosity and embracing adventure with both arms. It’s a time when you can pause to evaluate who you are now and who you want to become.

Are you finally freeing your spirit with a creative hobby, linking arms with a nonprofit that lights you up, grabbing your passport for bucket-list travel, or entertaining the thrill of new friendships and relationships? This decade is not a decline. It’s a redesign.

Your New Brand: No Audience Required

Traditional branding is audience-centric. But personal branding in your 60s? That’s self-centric – in a soul-expanding way.

Thankfully, this rebrand isn’t about what the corporate ladder dictates, who your kids need you to be, or how culture and community expect you to present yourself. It’s about who you want to be now, freed from decades of roles and responsibilities.

Here are a few questions to anchor your next-chapter personal brand identity:

• What parts of myself did I sideline to meet everyone else’s needs?
• What lights me up now – creatively, emotionally, socially?
• What do I want my days to feel like?
• How do I want to show up – style, energy, presence?

Your answers become your brand pillars – the foundation for your reinvention.

A Simple Framework: How to Rebrand Yourself After 60

If you love clarity (and who doesn’t?), here’s a framework to guide your rebrand:

1. Audit Your Current Brand

Take inventory of your routines, commitments, style, habits, digital presence, and social circles.

What feels outdated? What feels like “you” from 20 years ago? What no longer supports the woman you are now?

2. Define Your Core Values

What matters most in this chapter? Is it freedom, relationships, creativity, health, connection, adventure, peace, contribution?

Let these become your new North Star.

3. Craft Your Personal Style and Presence

Rebranding includes the visual you:

Clothing, hair, energy, body language – not just what you wear, but how you wear it with pride and purpose. It’s about more joy, more expression, fewer rules. Evolving your style doesn’t have to be drastic or expensive. Viewing a menu through signature reading glasses or lacing on bright colored trainers for the gym can create a vibe that’s all about the updated you.

4. Curate Your Calendar with Intention

Fill your weeks with experiences that reflect your new brand: travel, volunteering, classes, community, spiritual growth, fun. And don’t forget connection. Staying in touch and expanding your circle is so important in the later years.

5. Tell a New Story About Yourself

Share it in conversations, social media, your journal, or simply your daily choices.

This is who you are now, so own it boldly, and most importantly, enjoy the story to tell.

6. Fuel the Journey

When I was contemplating my own rebrand, what I wanted more than anything was a steady stream of inspiration to fuel the process. When I couldn’t find it, I decided to create it myself. That’s how Spark 60was born, a weekly email that presents a one-minute dose of inspiration, clarity, courage, and a spark of delight. Each week’s Spark delivers an idea, a shift in perspective, or a tiny action to keep the midlife momentum going.

The Bottom Line: Your 60s Aren’t a Sunset – They’re a Spotlight

Reinvention doesn’t belong to the young. It belongs to the brave. And women in their 60s have never been braver, wiser, or more ready. Your next chapter is calling – and it’s finally, beautifully, unapologetically yours.

Let’s Chat!

Have you wondered who you are today? Are you different from your 40-year-old self? How do you show yourself to the world?

Photo: @madisonlecroy

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Originally posted at: Madison LeCroy’s Black Mesh Dress