Hopefully the tips in the last blog helped focus your mind on a few things (even if it only resulted in cancelling coffee with Toxic Tara, ditching something or someone that brings you down is a great start).
Now’s the time to take things up a notch and start thinking longer term.
Think about the things that you want to achieve – both personally and professionally – and think about what it will take to realise these goals and what needs to be done. Work out a plan.
Are you really willing to invest the time and energy required?
Yes? Great – go for it!
But if not, ask yourself if that’s what you really want – if you’re unwilling to commit to achieving your goal, it may be that you don’t really want it, and that’s OK.
I’ve started so I’ll finish…
On the subject of setting goals, if you’re constantly setting yourself new goals when you haven’t achieved most (if not all) of your old ones, stop.
It’s great to chase new challenges, but you need to complete some old ones first – otherwise you’ll end up exhausted and frustrated because you never achieve anything. I tend to think of it like this – I won’t let my children open a new box of cereal until the box we’ve got on the go is finished; this is the same idea but on a bigger scale, unless it’s totally unavoidable, don’t start something until you’ve finished something else.
If you think being buried under an avalanche of cornflake boxes when you open the kitchen cupboard is stressful, that’s nothing compared to being overwhelmed emotionally by a load of half completed projects and unrealised goals…
Get real…
From time to time it’s useful to look at your goals and think about how they fit into your current life. We all change – and so do our lives – so the things we invested energy in a year or so ago may no longer be as important as they once seemed.
Are you chasing a goal that no longer matters or that doesn’t work for where you are now? If so, let it go and focus your time and energy elsewhere (yes, I know I just said finish one thing before tackling something new, but sometimes you have to be realistic and adapt, otherwise you’re wasting time on the wrong thing – just remember, though, unless you have a weird ambition to help your kids create a record breaking collection of cereal boxes, this approach ONLY applies to life goals!).
