Jumpstart your year and climb your mountain
Do you ever struggle with organizing your thoughts and reaching your goals, or is that just me?
(If anyone was expecting a hiking packing list, I sincerely apologize - maybe some other time!)
I often feel overwhelmed when setting my goals in life (and please let's not mistake these for new year's resolutions, regardless of the timing) because I rarely want to only choose one area to focus on. On the other hand, when I don't, it feels like a mammoth task, and the load immediately feels too heavy to carry and too high to climb. In this article, I will share how I go about it to make it feel much more doable and achievable. The steps I describe below have started as a fairly intuitive and freestyle process, yet it has helped me organize my thoughts and break big goals down - so I decided to type it down and share it with you. Feel free to take this with a pinch of salt and twist the flow below as needed; there is no one size fits all approach for chasing your goals and whatever you call success, so you can (and need) to make it your own.
Make space and time. Get comfortable and cozy, put your phone away, and make sure you have enough time set aside. It is crucial that you shut out distractions and really sit down with yourself and tune in. This should not be about ticking off an exercise but about granting yourself some thinking time and figuring out what you really want. My recommendation would be to do this on paper instead of digitally (which, if nothing else, really helps avoid distractions as notifications pop up), but to each their own.
Brainstorm. Try to forget what everybody else is doing or what you feel you should be doing. What is it that you want? What areas of life are important to you? What do you want to work on, improve in, focus on? What do you want to make time for? If you pick things you are passionate about for yourself and not topics that feel like an obligation, it will be much less challenging to make time for them in your life. My personal tip is, keep this brainstorming high level - for me, for example, one of the areas would be physical health, simply labeled as "body". There is no right or wrong answer in terms of what to pick. You can choose to focus on your spiritual journey as well as on your finances or your career. You do you, just be honest with yourself.
Take each of those areas and break it down. What are the elements that you can influence it through? Let's call these elements you map out in this step "pillars". To give you an example: for my goal of physical health, my pillars would simply be "exercise" and "food". Don't look for anything too complicated here. This step simply helps to get the thought process started and create a connection between your high-level goals and how you can go about them in your everyday life.
Go one level deeper. For each pillar from the breakdown in the previous step, identify and list a few actions you can easily take. The critical word here is "easily". Every action you identify should either be very easy to do for you or something you deeply, passionately desire to do. If you say you want to read more, make a list of books you want to read. Seeing a long list of long books might make you feel uneasy about the task - but that is why it is important to choose books you are genuinely excited to read. It needs to feel like something you get to do, not something you have to do. Some actions might not seem appealing, which is precisely why it's essential to choose something easy to do. Let's take managing finances as an example. If you want to improve your finances and save more, what area can you cut your spending in the easiest? Maybe you can go through your monthly magazine and app subscriptions and cancel those you don't enjoy or use anymore. Another easy action to get started might also be to just start writing down your expenses to get a better overview of where your money goes, to begin with. It might not sound too exciting to document all your expenses in an app or an excel file, but putting in a few numbers once a week definitely shouldn't be difficult.
Incorporate these actions into your daily life. When - during your regular day or week - can you make time to take these small actions? If you want to read more or start to exercise - you can start with just a few minutes a day. Every step in the right direction is a step forward; it doesn't matter how small. That is why I like to and recommend incorporating these steps on a daily level. Every step forward will motivate you further to keep going. Sure, there might be a difference in how your weekday looks compared to your weekend, and you might not be able to do everything you plan for a day every day, but that's fine. Creating another exhausting everyday to-do list is not the point here. My suggestion is to just try and identify spots in your day when you can focus on what YOU want to be doing. Tailor it to what comes easy to you. Over the last few months, I have realized some things feel easier for me in the morning (like running or planning out errands) and some in the evening (like yoga and learning). Figure out what works best for you and do it your way. Only then can you create a routine that feels achievable, exciting, and is your own.
“Is your calendar reflective of your dreams? Could I, just by looking at your calendar, tell what your top three priorities are for 2021?”
And now the final step - the crucial one. Go and book the time. Whether you use a physical diary or a digital one, take it and put the time for your actions in. Ensure you block out the time for doing the activities you have identified for yourself (it does not matter if it's taking part in an online dancing class or your weekly personal accounting/budgeting session). Maybe you'll find out it works best for you to do certain things every Sunday afternoon, but perhaps you'll need to find a different slot every week. Either way, for anything to happen, you need to book it in. We all know "life just happens" sometimes and whatever plans we made just fly out of the window. Yet, on many occasions, it's preventable. You can't go on a date if you don't make time for it and schedule it, right? How do you expect to go on dates and keep appointments with yourself if you don't make time for them in your schedule? The time will pass anyway, so you might as well take control over how you spend it and use it to get closer to reaching your goals.
Bonus tip: you don't have to only book time for when to be productive. You can book (set aside) time to rest and "just be" too. :) And if you fall off your schedule from time to time, that's perfectly fine as well. Just don't beat yourself up about it too much, and hop back on again whenever you can.
I wish you the best of luck with figuring out what you want and then climbing your mountain step by step. If you find this useful, I would be thrilled if you would share it with others, and if you have any thoughts on how to improve the flow, I'll be excited to hear from you!
