Ever heard of a ‘Passion Planner’? This is a guided journal and organizer that I have used to help me methodically yet inspirationally achieve all my goals over the past six years! This week I am sharing it with you and showing you how it helped me create the life I have today.

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Prefer to read? Here’s the blog version…

Hello, my loves. Welcome back to the podcast. This episode is long, long overdue. I’m so excited to be sharing with you how to use a passion planner.

And towards the end of the episode, we’re also going to take a look at my Passion Planner from this year, from 2022 as well as what came true, what didn’t come true, what I executed on and how I used it for this year. For those of you new to the show, new to my community who don’t know what a Passion Planner is, it is a physical journal that I’ve been using for the past. I believe it’s now six years. So it’s an annual journal. I bring it everywhere with me around the world. I plan my life, my business. It’s really clear what I have to execute on to get to my goals and it’s just something that has been so transformational and so core to my life and my business.

Most of my private clients own one and they have started using one themselves. And so in this episode I want to walk you through how you can use a passion planner to really make your dreams a reality. And if by the end of the episode you wanna purchase one yourself, you can click here where you can use the code DanielleH868 for 10% off of your Passion planner. 

How Passion Planner Works

So essentially they brand themselves as a life coach in a physical journal. And how it works is we start off with your passion roadmap. It makes you write down today’s date in a little box in the middle of the page, and then it makes you write down the dates for three months, one year from now, three years from now, and in your lifetime on this page of your Passion roadmap.

It is a step-by-step guide to mapping out your goals and it tells you to make a wishlist. Set a timer for five minutes. Imagine that whatever you write down on this piece of paper will come true within the designated timeframe. Think of it as a wishlist describing your ideal life. Ask yourself, if I could be anything, do anything or have anything, what would it be? Write every single thing that comes to mind and be as specific as possible. Lastly, do not feel the need to be realistic or justify your dreams. Just write. So set the timer, go through the prompt, write down the dates and brainstorm like what do you want to achieve in this lifetime in three years, in one year, and in three months?

The next step is to prioritize. So you wanna go back into everything you have written down and circle one thing in each timeframe that would have the most positive impact and these are the ones you’re going to map out in the next step. So what’s really cool about this exercise is first, it removes all limiting beliefs. Without any boundaries. Just write down everything you would love to happen in your life and don’t think, you know, I can’t do this, it’s too impractical. Why should I even bother? You have one life to live and it is not a dress rehearsal, so let’s just go with it cuz you never know what could happen.

The third step is to create your first passion plan. So we are going to choose one of the things that you wrote down. We’re going to set a due date and write down every single step that is necessary in order to reach your goal. And after we do all of this, the rest of the passion planner is basically getting you to map out how you’re going to achieve those goals monthly, weekly, and then breaking them down into daily habits and daily tasks that’s ultimately going to lead you to your goal. Does that make sense? So for example, the first ever passion planner that I got, my friend gifted it to me.

I was still working in a corporate job and going through this exercise really allowed me to think bigger than my current situation and my reality, it helped me think outside the box, it helped me find people who inspired me outside of the corporate world and it just gave me permission to think bigger. That is the first step because once you know what you wanna attract to your life and you’re unapologetic about it, the universe brings opportunities and people and it just shows you the way to get there. But you first have to decide for yourself what exactly it is that you want. 

How I’ve used my Passion Planners

And so in my past passion planners, I’ve written down, I wanna to quit my job in a certain amount of time.I wanted to start my online business, I wanted to move to a different country. I wanted to learn new languages. And with every single one of these seemingly impossible goals, when you break it down into what steps are necessary, it is so manageable and it makes sense. It’s not like this lofty dream that you want to accomplish in the future. It’s actually helping you. Like what are you gonna do in this moment this day to get you one step closer? 

I remember in my first passion planner I had written down, I wanted to learn how to read and write Chinese. I can speak it conversationally, but I wanted to be able to text my family and my Chinese friends on WhatsApp, on WeChat in Chinese because I wasn’t able to do that. And for those of you who are unfamiliar, Chinese is not phonetic, it’s pure memorization of characters. So you really have to know what each character is or else there’s really no way for you to pronounce it or read it. It’s really funny cuz sometimes my mom will like go grocery shopping and my parents are completely fluent, it’s their native language, but they’ll forget how to, you know, write a word in Chinese and they can’t like spell it out, they know English, so it’s fine. But it’s just funny to see how we’re so used to being able to write something even if we don’t know what the word is or how to pronounce it, but not in Chinese. 

So anyway, that was in my first ever passion planner.

I was at a desk job nine to five or more like eight to six, five days a week. And I had made it a priority to finally do this, which is something that I’ve put off for years and years and years. So instead of it being a lofty goal, what I did that the Passion Planner helped me with, I ordered Chinese textbooks, I subscribed to a Chinese newspaper online. I committed to only speaking to my parents in Chinese and I would be texting them little sentences every single day to really practice. Every single day I learned 10 characters and by the end of the year I was having conversations with my parents, which is exactly what I had wanted to achieve, right?

Very basic ones on WhatsApp, but I did it. So that is an example of how you get to reach your goals when you first set them and then you decide what you’re doing every day to achieve it. This has helped me quit my job, it has helped me start my business. It has helped me grow my business to six figures and then multiple six figures live in so many different countries, meet the partner of my dreams, be able to surf and achieve time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom, right? And there’s so still so much I want to achieve, like I want to start investing in real estate.

I want to eventually become a Hollywood actress. I wanna have a family. So the options and the things you can do in this life are truly limitless. The only limits that exist are the ones in your mind. The Passion Planner also gives you weekly challenges. It has reflection questions after every single month and just really holistic practices to get you intentional about what you want to work on and how you focus your time. It’ll give you prompts like what is the biggest goal you would like to accomplish this year? Who or what motivates you the most? Write some words of encouragement for yourself to read during hard times.

Monthly & Weekly Planning 

And if you go into the monthly planner, so after the annual planner of what you want to achieve for the year, you have the monthly breakdown which asks you what is your focus for this month? Who are the people you wanna see? Where are the places you wanna go? What things do you want to learn? And then it gives you this little grid for your top priority personal projects and top priority work projects. You also have a little space in the corner where you can break it down, create a mind map of this month’s game changer that you’re going to focus on after you plan out the month.

You then go into your weekly planner if you have the weekly or I’ve never had the daily before. I’ll go through the different options a little later, but I have the weekly, that’s the one I’ve been using for the past six years. And it shows you a weak view. You can choose whether you want it to start on Monday or Sunday. Mine, I prefer on Mondays. So my weekends are grouped together and you basically just plan out between the hours, you know of 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM what are you going to work on for the day? And you wanna focus on one thing for each week. They also give you a section to list out every single good thing that’s happened because we’re constantly focusing on what is going right in our lives and business instead of what is going wrong, right?

So celebrate all the little wins. I love that in each of the weeks, weeks there’s a quote, there is a reminder and just like feel good energy throughout this whole journal. We then have top priority personal projects and top priority work projects and a space of what they call a space of infinite possibility where I’m constantly just writing down new ideas, creative inspirations, and a place for me to brain dump when I feel like it. Towards the back of the Passion Planner, you’ll have empty pages where you can draw, where you can mind map, and at the very back there’s a little pocket where you can add in notes or just keep little mementos from your travels or things that you wanna hold near to you at all times.

So there’s just so much that you can do with a passion planner and I’m really excited because I just got a new one for 2023. 

Types of Passion Planners

Okay, I want to explain the different types of the passion planners. So if you want to get one yourself, you know exactly which one to order. So I think the biggest difference and the first question you wanna ask yourself is whether you want a weekly view or a daily view. Do you want one page for each day or do you want a spread for your whole week?

Like I said before, I’ve been using the weekly one. I feel like the daily one might be a little too intense cuz there are some days where I just look at it and I don’t really wanna write anything. I just wanna see what’s coming up and if I’m on track, so I prefer the weekly one, but some people in the Wonder Lover community, they use a daily one, both have the same purpose. It really depends if you want to be writing in it and journaling for each specific day or each week. Next, you wanna decide if you want the annual or the academic or an undated planner. The annual ones start in January, so that is when you’re going to do your mind map for the year it’s dated versus the academic one that’s also dated, but I believe it starts in August.

So it’s for students usually who start with semesters or if you want to start at a random time of the year, they also offer undated passion planners and you just have to write in the dates and the months yourself. I am specifically recording this episode, so if you guys want to do this for 2023, you’re just in time to be able to order a 2023 dated passion planner before the new year or even before Christmas if you wanted to gift this to a loved one. And also, like I mentioned before, there is a Sunday or Monday start.

So whether you prefer having your weekends all at the end, or if you want Sunday to be the start of your week, I prefer my weekends to be together, but I know different people have different preferences and some of my clients do prefer their weeks to start on Sunday. The next part of this episode, I want to share what I had in my passion planner from this year, and I actually had two because in 2020, in 2020 I had started an academic planner. So that one started in August, and so in 2022 I had one until July, and then I got another one from July until now, and I just ordered a new one for the year of 2023 because I really didn’t like how it split it in the middle. So I’m just gonna start over even though I still have six months left. 

What was in my 2022 Passion Planner

So since I did the goal mapping for 2022, starting in 2021, I’m just gonna read to you what I had written down on July 24th, 2021 in one year’s time, July 24th, 2022, what I wanted to achieve. So the first was hang five on a long board, and it’s just crazy to think that a year and a half ago I couldn’t hang five because now I can hang 10, and that’s just really cool to see how I was able to achieve that.

So much of why this planner works is when you have a goal, you get rid of all the barriers to get you there, right? So I had written down, I wanted to hang five on a longboard, and after traveling to so many different surf destinations around the world, there are different factors that help you progress in surfing. And because I had committed to this, not only was I visiting quote unquote just any surf destination I wanted to longboard more specifically, I wanted to longboard in a bikini even more specifically, I wanted to longboard in a bikini where I didn’t have to drive 20, 30 minutes to get to the beach, right?

Because having experienced all of that I know that it slows down my progress with doing something that I want. So same thing with anything business related, life related, you start getting rid of the barriers to help you get to your goal faster, okay? I had also wanted to launch a $20,000 mastermind, which I also accomplished. So I had a little checkbox next to that. This we’re actually going to dive into because with any monetary goal, I always break down the steps necessary in order to get there, right? I do this with my clients where I’m like, how much money do we want to be making this month?

And then it’s like, okay, what are we selling in order to get that number right? And then how are we going to sell it so we get that number? What are we going to invest in? How are we marketing? How are we selling? How are we advertising to get the people that we need into our business? I also wanted to go to rote for Rags birthday because it’s one of his favorite places in the world and he had been talking about it for years and I hadn’t been yet, so I made it happen. I also wanted to throw in 10,000 in crypto. Ha. Good times wasn’t my wisest financial decision, but I did it anyway.

Wanted to max out my Roth ira. So for retirement, and then for this year, on July 30th, 2022, I had written in one year’s time, I want to purchase my first investment property. I want to launch my v I P days, which are coming very, very soon. The one thing that I didn’t achieve, and I am no longer eligible, I had written I wanted to be under Forbes 30 under 30, and they already came out with the 2023 list and I turned 30 next year. So that is just something I need to live with going forward. And it’s completely okay.

I had this conversation with my private client the other day when we goal map and we set these big crazy goals for ourselves. It’s not black and white. It’s not like you are a failure if you don’t achieve this. If we set income goals for ourself, it’s not like our business is a failure if we don’t hit the income goal. By this time, after doing passion planning so many years, what I’ve learned is you are on this path, it’s coming to you inevitably, it’s already yours. We’re just taking baby steps every day until it is right. And that’s why I feel no pressure to get to these goals.

I know that I’m going to achieve them eventually, like with my first investment property, if I don’t get it by July of next year, like so what? Maybe I’ll get it by December of next year, right? Like the point is I’m working towards it, it I am learning about it and it’s going to be mine. So same thing with you and your business. If you are currently making two K months or 5K months and you had written down by January, I want to be making 10 K months, well, maybe it’s not gonna happen in January, but know that it’s going to happen. It’s either gonna happen in March or May or June, right? Like we don’t know, but we don’t need to know you’re already doing the work and it’s already yours.

Which brings me to my last point that I wanted to share with all of you. Just after years and years of passion planning, do not write income goals without having the energy and the strategy backed up behind it, right? So like what I said before, if you’re going to write, I want to make consistent 20 K months, what are you going to do differently to get there? How are you getting the numbers? How are you getting the number of people into your business to convert into that 20 K? And aside from business, what we also want to focus on are the daily habits, the daily systems in our business, or the daily habits that we take, the daily action items that are going to help us get there instead of just having a number and then running away from it.

And sometimes it’s even better to prioritize the daily habits instead of that numbers goal. For example, the other day I shared with one of my friends what the passion planner was and how I was planning so many different things every single year. Like, quit my job, start my business, travel the world, live in a different country. And I had shared with her my main thing for 2023 is that I want to start a YouTube channel and be consistent with it. And she kind of just like automatically gave a offhanded remark, oh, that’s so different than your other goals. It seems so much more attainable compared to every other goal I had set, which was very objective.

YouTube was more of an action focused or practice focus objective, right? And what she didn’t know behind the scenes was, my goal for 2023 is actually I want to hit a million dollars in revenue at the Wonder Lover and YouTube is the different platform, is the platform I’m going to expand onto to make that happen. But I need to create my content and create a workflow and create a team around that that’s going to make that happen, right? So I still have these really big goals for my life and business, but now it’s more how, what am I going to do differently? How am I thinking bigger and what is going to ultimately help me get there eventually? 

Goal Planning for 2023

So if you are planning for your next year, make sure everything aligns. We’re gonna do a little end of the year reflection and 2023 goal mapping in the Free Wander Lover Community Facebook group at the end of the month. So if you would like to join us, just search The Wanderlover Community on Facebook and you’ll see the link to join. If you want a Passion Planner for the next year, again, you can go into the episode description and use my discount code for 10% off. Let me know what you think.

Let me know if you need any help. Goal mapping yourself. My dms are always open and I love when new people buy passion planners because it truly will change your life. I’ll see you guys in the next episode. Have a fantastic week.

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