A goal without a plan is just a wish

Yesterday I attended a goal setting workshop that I really enjoyed & it made me want to share my views & the tools I use.

Coming from a background in competitive sport and sales to say that I am goal focused is an understatement. I didn't get up at 4am 3 times a week (yes every week) as a teenager just for shits & giggles - I had dreams I wanted to achieve & that was part of the process to get there.

In my adult life I have always worked in a sales environment where targets / budgets & KPI's (key performance indicators) are an integral part of doing business.

Having goals is great, we all have certain things we'd like to achieve in life whether that's in sport, work or relationships. But having a "goal" isn't enough. A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Last year was a year of personal growth for me & one of the key learnings I took out of that was that only actions = results.

Good intentions don't mean shit if you don't commit to making changes to your day to day life, "one day" is never going to arrive if you dont start TODAY.

 Still with me so far?

Last year I sat down & wrote out a big list of what was important to me and I found that a lot of things in that list weren't actually priorities in my day to day life, I'd fit them in when I "had time" - which was never.

That meant I had to make some pretty big changes. It was scary but exhilarating to step away from the hum drum of life as I knew it.

Anyway, I digress, long story short I decided to start looking at what I do (or don't do as the case may be) on a daily basis. That's when I started bullet journalling.

I started with a list of things I wanted to achieve in the month & I set up a daily tracker to see how often I was actually doing those things. More often than not I wasn't doing said things.

To begin with I would beat myself up for not doing what I planned to, but then I decided to look from a positive perspective instead - if I'm not actually commiting to certain things then maybe they're not actually that important to me? So each month I'd re-assess my daily tracker. A year later I'm still doing it - with varying degrees of success I'll admit.

My point is that we are human, none of us are perfect & we are all in a constant "work in progress" state.

Our lives reflect our daily choices, I'm choosing to pay more attention to my choices.

Do you plan your goals? Do you pay attention to your day to day living?

Julia x