Happy New Year!
This site is about discovering and pursuing an authentic life. Its about being real. Its about pursuing what you love and discovering your purpose or your mission in life. Part of that involves planning and goal setting.
I look at the new year and I see a crystal clean canvas that can be filled with wonderful experiences. Its a time for renewal. Its a time to wield the awesome power of choice. The choices I make now will impact the way I live my life today, next week and continuing on into the year. If I choose to focus on the things that I value I cannot help but create positive experiences and positive outcomes. So, where do I start?
For the last few days I’ve invested time into creating a list of wishes/wants/goals. These range from projects and goals I want to accomplish to new skills and knowledge I want to learn. These also encompass things I want to acquire and people I want to meet. It is a long list. At final count I’m on item one hundred thirty five.. The list of goals naturally fall into various categories. As I read through my list, I see wishes that are centered on health, finances, professional development, relationships, etc. The list is long because I wanted to get away from my ‘thinking’ mind and delve into my more intuitive center. This is the place where the pat answers begin to fade away and the struggle to write down the next wish leads me to new or exciting places. By stretching in this way, I have allowed myself to delve more deeply into who I am, what I represent, and what I value. I also move closer to the feelings and experiences I wish to create for the year.
During the process I found myself at times closing my eyes and urging myself on. A pep talk if you will. I’d say, “Dave, what do you want? If you could have whatever you want, no holds barred, no limitations, what would that look like?” Whenever I’d get stuck in trying to generate another wish/goal, I’d repeat this and try to move deeper into what I really want from life.
By making this list of wishes, I learn more about myself. I become clearer about what I want from life. Some of the items are kind of crazy, some will likely be useful and some are golden. Will every one of the 135 ‘wishes’ be a goal I choose to pursue? No, but I have without a doubt learned more about myself.
It can be exciting to have such a large list and it can also lead me to spread myself too thin. Which wishes shall I focus on? Knowing myself, I can easily get out of balance. I can focus so much of my time and energy on one aspect of my life that other other aspects will be harmed. This hasn’t been healthy for me. So, I choose a few major ‘wishes’ for each of the various roles and categories of my life in order to promote some balance.
After this I visualize exactly what I want my life to look like and what experiences I wish to have as a result of accomplishing these goals. Each goal is broken down into various steps or projects. When each of these small steps are accomplished, I naturally move closer to achieving my visualized end result. Not only does this provide me with a simple step-by-step blueprint, but it also allows me to feel good about achieving the mini goals that are needed to achieve the BIG goal.
After getting this far, I find its critical to keep my goals and action list nearby. In addition to keeping it in my computer, I create a 3-ring binder for my blueprint so that I can always have it at hand. This binder will be kept at my desk and will be reviewed several times a day… possibly many times per day. By reading through this blueprint often, it becomes a part of me. It becomes ingrained in my thinking. It allows me to focus more thoroughly on accomplishing each goal because I will always know what I can be doing to move myself closer to achieving my goals.