Another year is here! Hooray and my God! This is the time of the year when we set our intentions for the coming year and identify the goals we want to achieve. It’s also a time for personal reflection on all the good things that happened in the past year and a reminder of what we didn’t do.
So, to start the year off strong, consider this 3-step process to get started quickly:
Step 1: Vision
Visualization is all about using the power of your imagination to visualize the successful completion of your goals. Start by daydreaming about all your wishes for this year. In your mind’s eye there are no limits. Be sure to consider each area of your life: career, family, friends, partner, health, finances, environment, spirituality, personal growth, fun, and recreation. Imagine you are at the end of 2020 looking back on the year: what does it look like from this perspective? Describe that ideal vision. There are many tools to help you in this step. Here are some suggestions. Create a vision board by cutting out images from magazines or printing images from sites like Instagram that best describe your ideal situation. Create a collage of pictures, pictures, and words to add to your vision board. If vision boards aren’t your thing. You can also journal about your ideal life or your ideal year. To get a clearer vision of your future, meditate or daydream to get clear images or a feeling of what you envision for your future.
Step 2: Schedule
Planning is the process of thinking about the activities you need to complete to achieve the desired goal. It is the process of making a scheme or plan to achieve the goal using the resources that you have available or that you can make available and including any restrictions such as time or money. There are many ways to do this step. I’ve created a goals worksheet that I use with my clients that helps minimize overwhelm by breaking it down into smaller steps. Another simple process is to make a list of all the activities that you think need to be completed to reach the goal. Then prioritize the list by item of importance and in order of required completion. Please note that some activities are dependent on the completion of others. Then identify the deadlines for each activity. You can consolidate all activities and schedules into one spreadsheet or Word document to provide some structure to your plan. Finally, move each activity item to your calendar and block the time to complete it.
Step 3: Act
The visualization step represents about 20% of roadmap development, and the planning step represents 60% of the process and is where most of the work is thought through. The final 20% represents the actual action taken. When you have a clear vision and a well thought out plan, action becomes much easier. One step at a time will lead you to your goal.