There's eleven more days until we enter the New Year and it's time to do some soul searching. In the past, I've been a bit afraid of failing. I'm a perfectionist and I want to succeed at everything. But I've had to learn to be reasonable with myself. I still believe I can accomplish anything I set my mind to, but I had to decide what I wanted to focus my energy on. I had to come up with a plan.
Last year, my goal was to finish my Bachelor degree and the two corresponding certifications, and that's what I did. I realized, though, I didn't have a plan for the 2nd half of the year. Really, I didn't have a plan, at all. Just the overall goal of graduating. And you know what they say... If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Did you have a plan for this last year, as far as what you wanted to accomplish? How detailed was it? If you did have a plan, you might be able to reflect upon it and cross off things that you were able to accomplish. If you made the same mistake I made, you probably didn't do much planning or create too much of a timeline. Just wrote down things you wanted to accomplish.
Do you have a plan for this upcoming year? What about the next five years? It's easiest to look at your life in five year blocks and then break it down. While trying to plan my own personal goals for the next five years, I visited the www.skillstoolbox.com and looked at their "Goal Setting Process". They listed these six steps. Feel free to click on the links and get more information.
- Record Your Goals — Choose a goal or several goals and write them down
- Prioritize Your Goals — Order your goals in terms of importance
- Break Large Goals into Sub-Goals — Breaking down large goals helps make them more manageable
- Create a Timeline for your Goal — Decide on a reasonable time in which to complete your goal
- Breaking a Sub-goal into Tasks — Schedule a set of specific tasks to do that will help you achieve your goal
- Following Through — Without following through you can't reach your goal
Another key factor in creating your blueprint for success is speaking/writing goals down affirmatively. Speak of them as you see them playing out, not as wants or desires. By doing this, you create a sense of presence and reality in your goals. For example, one of my goals is to start engaging in public speaking. So, when I write my timeline for the next five years, somewhere along that line I will put "I speak to young women about the importance of loving one's self first."
Over the next week, I'll be going more in depth into the goal writing process. Your journey will become my journey and we can accomplish them together. Let's get ready for 2013 and the years to follow today! Diva style!
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