With the beginning of a new year and new decade, it is an important time to plan for your future with writing down what you’d like to achieve.
Have you thought about where you’d like to be at the end of this year?
What do you see yourself doing in the next two, three or five years?
Do you ever dare to look ahead 10 years?
Challenge yourself to create a ‘bucket list’, a list of all the things you dream of doing in your lifetime.
This type of thinking is so healthy. If you are going a trip you will take the time plan to the last detail: where you’re going, what method of transportation, book accommodation, what type of site-seeing you want to do.
It’s interesting how in society we tend to pay so much less attention to detail with our own daily lives.
Have you heard the term, “Create your own best day, your own best life”? We can, after all, create the results we want in life by planning for success. Life will just happen to you and circumstances will control all your time if you don’t take charge by making a plan for how you want your future and each day to look.
1. — Write down your goal. This is the first, essential step in the process. Even thinking up your goal is just mental chatter until you write it down, which reinforces what you want to achieve by having a visual reminder. It gives you direction and makes your goal stand out from all the things you’ve pondered achieving — but never cared enough to write down.
2. — Imagine you’ve already achieved your goal by visualization. Visualizing what you want to happen helps to convince your sub-conscious mind it is real and therefore it’s just a matter of time before it manifests itself in the physical form. Seeing is believing. You must first have a very clear picture in your mind of what you want, where you’ll be, and incorporate all the senses so your visualization to make it more real.
Write affirmation statements like: “I feel the warm ocean breeze as I sip my cool drink on the deck of my beach house surrounded by lush green palm trees and the sound of tropical birds. My retirement home offers a place of comfort and relaxation.”
Using descriptive language paints a much clearer picture so the mind can conceive and then believe and attract it to you.
3. — Set up a plan to get you to where you want to go. Without a plan, goals are just wishful thinking. Many have failed to reach their goals because they didn’t make a ‘plan’, or a step by step process in place to achieve them. You can’t have the cart before the horse!
4. — Have someone you can be accountable to in order to track your progress.
Have smaller sub goals that focus on weekly activities to help you reach larger goals and be accountable to a ‘success buddy’.
This could be a spouse, partner, friend — someone that understands your vision of where you want to go and also has goals they’re working on themselves.
You must support and encourage each other with regular contact to share successes and challenges.
Have fun making your bucket list, writing down your goals and create a plan so you can design the life you’ve always dreamed of!
Judy Holt is a freelance columnist living in Lacombe.