So, you’ve made your new year’s resolution, you’ve thought about your goals for your life and business…It’s now February…how’s that going for you? Do you even remember what you thought about? What steps have you taken towards them? Or are you in the same place you were January 1st?
Don’t worry, this is normal. Heck, if you even THOUGHT about your goals, you’re more than halfway there, a part of the top 20% of people even! What if you could really do something about them? More than just think about them? More than just dream? What if you could really make strides to actually achieve them? Maybe even blow PAST them?
What would that mean to you? More customers? More income? More time? More travel? More adventures?
What if I told you it was possible? Well, it is. Big, small, in between…your goals are achievable…you just have to take some action. And the first step is to write them down. Just the simple act of writing your goal down and being REALLY specific sets the gears in motion. It lets the universe (and your mind) know that this is something you’re serious about.
Let’s face it, most people just talk about getting things done. But that’s all it is, talk. There’s never anything decisive happening. They just say, “Oh, I’d love to visit Paris, France one day.” But they never DO anything about it. It’s a “one day”, “someday”, far away dream that they say is really important to them but never seems to happen.
What’s on your list as a “one day”, “someday”, far away dream? What have you been talking about for years, but nothing’s happened with it? We all have things on this list, it’s normal, nothing to beat yourself up for. The question is, do you want to change that? Are you willing to start taking some action to really move toward your dream, goal, idea?
If you are, then come with me on a grand adventure to find out how!
The first step is to WRITE IT DOWN!!!! Put it in black and white! Make it REAL!
Write down ALL the things about your dream/goal. What color is it? How big is it? Where is it? What will you do with it? Who will it help? Why is it important? Who will be with you? Who WON’T be with you? What will life be like once you achieve it? What will it allow you to do? Where will it allow you to go from there?
You could even go so far as to create a “vision board”. Get pictures of it or that represent it. Put them on a poster board and hang it somewhere you will see it every day. Create a model of it. MAKE IT REAL! Post it on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, the background of your phone, wherever!
Make it so you can see, hear, touch, taste, and/or smell it every day. Steep yourself in your goal. Just this one small step will have startling results.
You’ll start to see flashes of it during your day as you wander around town. You’ll see ads about it (or a portion of it) everywhere. You’ll start to notice little things about it in your daily life…just from this one action of writing it down and making it real.
What’s stopping you? It’s not like writing it down is going to change anything in your life right now, is it? What harm will it do to just get really clear on what your goal is? Heck, if you wanted to you could just do this step then walk away and never look at it again. There’s no skin off your nose to take 5 minutes and jot something down.
Or are you afraid to write it down? Are you afraid to dream the big dream? If you write it down will you feel like a failure because it hasn’t happened yet? How long has this been a dream…and it’s still not happening? Does writing it down feel like the heaviest thing you could possibly do? Does your heart stop at the mere thought of just acknowledging you have a dream?
What’s the voice inside telling you? What are the images you see when imagining your dream? Is it ridicule, shame? Do you hear “What do you think you’re doing?”, “You can’t do that!”, “Who the hell are you to think you can achieve that?” Do you imagine that people will laugh at you? That people will look at you like you’ve just grown a third eye or maybe a second head? What will those people say? “Oh, that’s just them going off on another tangent that will never happen. Why do they even try? They never do anything. It’s just another cockamamie thing they’ll try and fail at.”
I totally get that, because that was me…I don’t know how many home businesses I’ve tried, and they lasted less than a year. Pampered Chef, Melaleuca, writing a novel, video editing, the list goes on. None of them ever amounted to anything and usually cost me more than they ever made me.
And what about the fun things I said I wanted to do? All the family trips that we talked about and then ended up talking ourselves out of because of work, family getting sick, we can’t afford it, [insert excuse of the week here].
Really it all boiled down to a feeling of not being worth it. Either I wasn’t worth the good time or the perceived ridicule we’d get as a family wasn’t worth it…whatever it was wasn’t worth it.
That’s a scary place to be…because it means you’re stuck. You’re stuck right where you are and there is NO movement away from it. Is that where you want to be? I know that place and I don’t want that for you. That’s the place from which one looks at an oncoming dump truck and thinks, “Maybe, if I step off the curb at the right time, I won’t have to continue going to the great job I’ve come to hate for a little while because I’ll be in the hospital.”
THAT’s where I was when I quit my job and started full time on my business. But I had to start with GOALS! How was I going to make this WORK this time? I couldn’t, I CAN’T go back to a J.O.B.! My spirit won’t allow it…it’s just not for me anymore.
So, I had to WRITE my goals down. What did I want my business to look like? How much did I need/want it to bring in? What time did I want to spend on it? What time did I need to have with my family?
If you have a dream, something you’ve been thinking about for years but have never quite done anything about, stick your toe into the pool and see what might happen. Write it down in all it’s glorious detail, what’s it going to hurt?
And if you have feelings about just writing it down, then you should DEFINITILY write it down! It’s just waiting to get out of you! That fear is screaming at you to write it down!!!
I read something in the book “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks that has helped me in my moments of fear. That something is: Fear is excitement without breath. Take a breath, know that your fear is just excitement for the dream that you’ve been dreaming, then WRITE IT DOWN! Get clear on what it is you want to achieve. It’s just a piece of paper and no one else has to see it. This is just for YOU, no one else!
You got this! Now go get it!