OK, no-one knows what the future holds. At the start of 2020, I’m guessing that no-ones New Year resolutions included being locked down for weeks due to a virus.
But, barring completely unforseen circumstances, it is possible to build yourself up to have a successful future – whatever your definition of success is to you.
Which, actually, is a good place to start. Because if you don’t know what success means to you, how will you know when you’ve reached it? And what will you do when you do reach that place in the future? Those are points to consider when you’re following these steps.
Make sure your future is big and bright in your mind
This is the first step you need to do.
If you spend longer deciding what to eat for dinner or watch on Netflix than you spend on your what your future looks like, that needs to change.
Now is the time to dream a bit.
We can bring it back to reality once you’ve given yourself a free reign on your future.
OK, unless you’ve been born into certain families there might be a few things you can’t include (a future King or Queen for example) but most other things are at least possible, even if they’re improbable.
Write down your ideal future – pen and paper rather than keyboards and computers work best for this.
Describe it in as much detail as you possibly can.
Make the description so detailed you can smell and see and taste it!
Then figure out what needs to happen to get as close as possible to that ideal future – that’s where your success goals come from.
Set your success goal
Goal setting is one of those things we know we should do but often leave as a task for tomorrow.
But we should do it!
There’s a trade-off on goal setting that’s not mentioned as often as it should be. If the goal is too far into the future, it’s kind-of fine and we don’t really work towards it because there’s plenty of time left. And we keep saying that, year in, year out but never getting any closer.
Which means that if you have a fairly distant goal (one that’s measured in years rather than days or weeks or months) then you need to chunk it down into a series of smaller steps.
A good friend of mine, David Hyner, says that those chunks should be really small . He suggests that you draw a pyramid with lots of blocks in it. Each block has one item written in it and each item should be do-able within a 24 hour period.The building blocks go at the bottom of the pyramid – the ones that are essential for the later processes to happen. You’ll either know what these are instinctively or you can brainstorm with yourself to work them out.
When you’ve done that, make sure that you do at least one task towards your goal every day. And delight in obliterating the task with a marker pen so that the block in your visual goal pyramid is filled in.
If that kind of thing seems too much to contemplate then start with smaller goals. Ones that can be accomplished soon – doing that will give you the motivation to move on to larger goals in the future.
One other thing – only work on one project at a time. We’re rubbish at multi-tasking and by having too many goals at once, we don’t concentrate on any of them so nothing gets done. Much like the busy fool.
Keep working on your success goal
It’s way too easy to get distracted from our goals.
OK, you might have wanted to be an astronaut when you were growing up – that’s the kind of goal a lot of children set. But, in time, that passes. Maybe your interests change or life gets in the way.
That second point is an issue for lots of us.
We get stuck in a rut and the glorious future we had planned for ourselves fades as the routines of everyday life take over.
We have responsibilities – car repayments, maybe a home, maybe a family – and they can get in the way of our future, even though they’re likely a part of it.
That may mean that you need to re-evaluate your goal.
Anyone who wanted to be, say, a telex repairman when they were growing up would already need to have done that.
Which means that your goals can’t necessarily be set in stone. Things change. Old opportunities disappear, new opportunities replace them.
Get help with your plans
Let’s face it, most of us need help and assisitance doing things. We don’t grow our own food or make our own gadgets. So there’s no real difference getting help with our future plans.
Maybe it’s even more important to do this – after all, you can pop out and buy a new gadget or some food but you can’t go down to the local store and buy your future. You have to work towards it.
Future planning can be a lonely place – if you have friends and relatives who keep knocking down your future plans, you get worried that they’re right and maybe even believe their predictions.
If you’ve got friends who’ll stand by you and support you, treasure them and support their future goals as well.
But if that kind of help isn’t a part of your life, a good “second best” is to train your mind to help you achieve your future.
Listening to a hypnosis track on a regular basis will do just that.
It’s a powerful way to get your plan planned and nudge you to take the necessary steps to turn your future into your present.
This is the first step you need to do.
