Meet the Author of the SPICER Planner, Philippa Channer

Make breakfast and get kids ready and on the bus for school. Get myself ready for my day at work. Arrive at work and answer client emails. Prepare client projects and fulfill client requests. Attend at least three meetings throughout the day. Think about the unstarted load of laundry waiting for me when I come home. Consider how I didn't clean up dishes from this morning that are still sitting on the counter. Wrap up work 30 minutes later than anticipated and then finally head back home to go into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Make sure kids are on top of homework before playing games. Ensure kids are showered and then head up for storytime, prayers, and get kids in bed: sleep, wake, and repeat.

That was a typical day in my life before the SPICER Planner. A whole lot of taking care of others' needs and pretty much nothing in my daily routine about taking care of me. Don't get me wrong, a lot of what I was doing and still am doing for others is extremely important and a top priority for me, my family, work, and taking care of my home. But what I was missing before was balance, stability, and some self-care and self-reflection.

How I got started

It took me hitting a shallow point to stop this cycle and make some changes. I felt incredibly lost and overwhelmed every day, like I was walking lost in a fog of confusion and loneliness. Even though my family surrounded me, I still felt alone and not understood. Resentment started to kick in, and I knew something had to change, and like most people, I began this journey by trying to change those around me. If only everyone else did (fill in the blank with what you need), I would feel better. As you can imagine, that did not end well. My family just became upset and uncomfortable with me trying to change them. I felt discouraged and lost as to how to move forward.

At a loss for what to do next, I started to journal my emotions and what was happening. Each time I felt discouraged, empty, lost, or lonely, I wrote down where I was, what I was doing, and what I thought triggered those emotions. From this exercise, I started to see patterns in my feelings, recurring triggers. I noticed I felt the lowest when I was spending my time helping others. Now that made me feel even worse. What wife and mother don't want to help their family? How selfish was I being? I had to figure out how assisting others to overcome a challenge or fulfill a goal brought me down. This brought me to write down what challenges or goals I was working on that I wished someone would help me achieve. I got out my journal to start and just stared at the empty page. I had nothing. There was nothing I was pursuing on my own. No goals or ambitions were born from a dream I had within me. This realization made me sad while also forcing me to take some time to reflect. What did I want? My future is just as important as the future my children are making for themselves. I just needed to know what that future was and how to get there.

Finding My Own SPICE

After a week of praying and thinking, I still had not thought of what my own dreams and goals were. So I did what any lost person does, I turned to Google. After a quick search, I found several sources that had information and guidance on setting personal goals. One recurring theme from each of the sources I saw included a breakdown of the different areas of life that people tend to create personal goals.

Spiritual Goals (increased prayer life, more profound relationship with a higher being)
Physical Fitness Goals (weight loss or gain)
Intellect or Educational goals (earn a degree, learn a language etc)
Career Enhancements (starting a career, earning a promotion etc.)
Relationship (starting/ending relationships, improving quality of relationships)
Emotional (gaining more control of our emotional response to life)

So I used this as a guide and started listing different things I wanted to see for each area. This kick-started my journey tremendously. Approaching the situation from this angle helped open my emotions to things I didn't consider needing improvement months ago. I now had a good starting point to figuring out what it was I wanted with my life.

The next step was to pick one item from each personal development section to focus on growth over the next year and make it a goal for improvement.

How my life changed

Equipped with six new personal goals of my own, my daily approach to life significantly changed. From the moment I woke up, I now had new motivations and purpose for how I invested my time. My morning routines changed significantly, which helped direct the trajectory of my entire day. I added routines, dropped bad habits, and made significant changes to help get me closer to my goals. All because of the practices I started to form, reflect on, and work towards these six life-changing goals.

This experiment, born from my journey, lead me to develop the SPICER planner. I knew without a doubt that I was not the only mother, wife, and entrepreneur experiencing this sense of loss and loneliness. I knew if it could help drastically change my life, it could impact other women as well.

What I see or the SPICER Planner in the future

I am grateful for where the pain and struggles I experienced have brought me, for, without it, I would not have developed this amazingly helpful tool. I also understand that this journey isn't over. As more people start to use the SPICER Planner, I will be getting even more feedback on how it can be refined and reshaped to make a bigger impact on everyone's lives. I already have notes of what I can do to make the next installment of the SPICER Planner even stronger. I also hope to expand and meet the needs of people in different stages of life—planners designed to help students, creatives, and others beyond just entrepreneurial mothers. So stick around to watch how we grow this brand over the years.