Are you are finishing another year where you feel like you have worked really hard, put in long hours, but nothing has changed at all? You feel frustrated and disillusioned, wondering what it will take for you to finally start to see results in your life. The goals you dreamt about achieving this year are no closer, today than they were 11 months ago. Is it time to finally resign yourself to your lot in life and to accept that you are trapped in mediocrity and no matter how hard you try, you will just remain stuck on the hamster wheel of discontentment?
Nothing could be further from the truth, the reason that you go from one year to the next, achieving very little, trapped in a life that you feel you cannot change, is that you are approaching each year unequipped to make any real progress at all. People spend six months planning a wedding, down to the finest detail, yet when it comes time to plan for their future, they are unable to find any time at all.
If you finally want things to change next year, then you need to change the way you do things. Instead of charging into next year blindly, with no real plan or strategy and only a vague picture of what you want to achieve, make a different choice this time around and set at a minimum of 40 hours aside, over the next few weeks to work on creating your plan. This is time that you will schedule into your dairy today, to work on your plan. Nothing short of a third world war or major catastrophe can get in the way of your commitment to use this time exclusively for creating a plan for your life.
The place to start when you are creating the plan for your life is to first look at your definition of success. Are you sure that the dream you are chasing is really what you want or is it just an illusion that society or someone else has planted in your head? Until you discover what you really want, you are chasing after a dream that has no real meaning to you and discovering why you are travelling in that direction will be impossible.
Action Idea: One idea that has proven very successful to unlock this concept, which may be hidden really deep inside you, is to create an I Want list. Sit in front of someone and let them ask you the question “What do you really want?” Let them keep asking you this question for about five to ten minutes. Record your answers on an audio recording device. As you examine your list you will see that, at first your answers are routine and not very deep at all, as the exercise continues, you will find that your true answers begin to emerge and your real desires are expressed. This is a really valuable exercise and will help you to answer this crucial question, “What does Success Mean To You?”
The next step is to assess your abilities, attributes, strengths, weaknesses, interests and traits. This audit is essential if you want to ride on the front of the wave of all the possibilities that you have available to you. Until you conduct this self-audit, where you carefully assess all the areas of your life, identifying areas that are able to support your ambition to become more, you identify any areas that may require improvement and you discover the areas where you have weaknesses, you are flying blind and will just continue spinning your wheels.
Action Idea: A great way to start this benchmarking exercise is to arrange to spend a weekend away with family members or key associates and dust off the cobwebs of your childhood memories. Go back to your childhood and remember what you really enjoyed and wanted most as a child.
Now explore your interests and hobbies, what do you really enjoy doing after work or when you have any free time? What are these interests and hobbies telling you about what you love to do, can you incorporate more of what you love to do into your career?
Now explore your strengths, weaknesses, abilities and attributes. Ask people around you for feedback on how they perceive your strengths, weaknesses, abilities and attributes. Armed with this information, introspect and see where your real strengths and weaknesses lie. This information will allow you to begin playing to your strengths and getting people to support you with your weaknesses.
Now that you have a starting point, where you know what success means to you, you have a better understanding about what you really want and you understand your strengths and weaknesses. This information is all you need, to begin the process of building your plan, which will transform your life and allow you to finally begin realising all your goals.
Author: Andrew Horton Time Management Training
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