Creating The Roadmap To Your Dreams

Making big dreams come true only takes a simple plan.

 

Achieving your dreams is easier said than done. It’s pretty much true that what you dream can be achieved. Still, many of us only dream and fail to reach our objectives. While every career or life dream is unique to every individual, there are some basic steps that can help you map out your future one step at a time.

Don’t procrastinate. Putting things off is a human trait, but procrastination is the enemy of progress for obvious reasons. The problem comes in when you beat yourself up for putting things off. So, let the journey begin by taking the first step, which is executing your plan to achieve your dreams.

Write it down. Your career or life goals should be written down. It doesn’t have to be a plan like we normally understand a plan, like a marketing plan or a business plan. Those are important though different than a basic road map to your goals. Your goal setting can be as simple as a one pager showing the connection of steps along a line towards your goal.

Define your ultimate goals. If your goal is to find a job, establish a revenue target for yourself, or complete training, it’s important to write those objectives down. Writing it down makes it more real. And voicing it out loud, on the page, is a good way for you to keep your goals in view and will give you a better chance of making those dream goals come true.

Tell your friends. I’m not saying go out and tell everyone your plans, but you can stay on track by letting your close friend or friends about what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there. Having others ask you about your progress later will help you stay on course as you move closer to achieving your goals. Friends can support us simply by knowing what our plans are. By vocalizing it to them you’re again bringing your ideas and dreams to life, making it more likely you’ll get to where you want to go.

Set milestone goals. Like signposts along a road, every life or career plan has milestones. Mark those milestones down along your pathway to your goal. When you reach those milestone goals, stop a minute, get out of the car and smell the roses. The rewards are along the way, and it’s important to reward yourself along the way. You can’t get where you want to be driving yourself at 100 miles per hour every day. Treat it like a journey where every marker along the way to your ultimate destination is worth taking the time to savour.

Reward yourself. There are no lack of women and men who are highly driven, but that doesn’t mean their drive is focused. A lot of people involve themselves in busy work, calling it progress, when it’s not. In order to drive in one direction and achieve, you need focus. You also need to reward yourself. I coach a lot of clients who never reward themselves for reaching their milestone goals, but you should. Rewarding yourself is affirmation to yourself that you are making progress. Treat every milestone goal as a reward, which will help release your brain’s happy chemicals, which will help you make it to your next milestone.

Mapping out your life and career goals is something that hardly anyone does. But I can tell you, from my own experiences and the experiences of my clients over 20 years of coaching, that a simple plan works to help guide you through the twists and turns that are always ahead. Knowing where you’re going and how you’re going to get there is key to any journey of realization.

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