Here’s the deal. Everything that’s passed… is past. Think about what’s here now, and what’s to come.
What do you want out of the coming months? The coming year? And how are you going to get there?
I do a lot of career coaching, and know that when we can answer the first question, we can start putting together a plan to answer the second question. And it begins even earlier with another question – if you could be doing anything, what would it be? I mean, ANYTHING.
Really – what’s your dream?
Until you say it out loud and identify what you really want to do, love to do, or dream about doing, you’re never going to have a shot of seeing it materialize. Without owning it, without naming it, it stays locked up. Time’s a wastin’, people. Shout those dreams from the rooftops.
"The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do." ~Sarah Ban Breathnach
So, how are you going to chase that dream once you name it? When I’m in the garden, I love to harvest everything in sight. Then, I get in the house, and am overwhelmed at all the food. All the beauty, suddenly in danger of going to waste. I am both excited and overwhelmed by the prospect. Then I take a deep breath, chop it up and store it in containers – and suddenly, it’s all manageable. Get where I’m going with this? (Hey, we all have our metaphors.)
We often see the brilliance of our own dreams and squint in the light, or even turn away. It’s too much, it seems, to imagine chasing after something so big – there’s is that chance it may not work. But this is your life – why get to the end saying you lived life following status quo out of fear, never finding out if you coulda, if you woulda…?
And that’s why not only saying it out loud, but thinking about it and writing it down, can be incredibly valuable. “Writing, by its nature, forces students to articulate ideas and reasoning, it can help them deepen, develop, and revise their thinking about the subject material.” (MIT). When I coach, I create a planning document that we both can add to – every time either of us have an idea, a lead, a task, a tool, they’re all documented.
Need some food for thought? I recommend templates out there like the ones you can download on Liveyourlegend.net to help create structure out of the blob of confusion in your mind. And then tell the world what you want to do. Yes, you have to do homework.
You want change? Get moving. Make the time. Chop it up and make it manageable. Commit to the dream. Learn. And open yourself up to wherever it may take you.
Make the future yours.
"It is never too late to be who you might have been." ~George Eliot