January can be a tricky month. The excitement and festivities of Christmas are behind us, it can be grey, damp and dark outside and we're back to the busy routine of weekly life; work, school runs and taxiing to and from after school clubs. Spring and summer can seem a long way away!
On the other hand, January can single a new start, another chance to do the things you had intended to do last year, a time for new plans and new possibilities. As I'm writing today, it's one of those fantastic crisp January days of blue skies and bright sunshine. Yes it's flipping freezing but nothing that my woolie bobble hat can't fend off. It feels like a positive day for new beginnings and new goals.
I'm not a big one for new year resolutions but there are two times in the year, without fail, that I set goals and January is one of those times. My husband knows I’m an old fashioned girl at heart and like to write things down with pen on paper so treats me to a beautiful diary each Christmas. My goals, tend to be a mixture of family focused, lifestyle choices and work planing goals for the year laying ahead and are one of the first things to be scribbled into my new diary. The other time is late August, after we’ve been away for our family holiday and had time to switch off a bit, reflect and before the new school term starts and the madness that brings with it.
Now there is one thing I want to make clear, firstly, I should really be saying ideas at this point rather than goals as ideas are the seeds we plant from which goals can grow if we decide to give them enough attention.
Ideas are the seeds we plant from which goals can grow.
Ideas are the big and little thoughts that pop into our head like “I’d like to lose some weight” or “I think we need to de-clutter the house” or "I want to be more organised" or “wouldn’t it be good to turn the garage into a mini fromargerie”. It is then up to us to look through our ideas and decide which ones are going to go on to get the whole Goal VIP Treatment and become fully fledged goals and which ones will be stored on a kind of idea shelf. Some of these ideas will remain on the shelf, possibly gathering dust and becoming outdated and destined for the idea achieve while others will be called into the Goal VIP area at a future date and given the Goal VIP Treatment. It’s in the Goal VIP area where the makeover work really begins.
If you have ideas you want to make into fully fledged goals and ultimately actually make happen then have a look at my Make It Happen Tool
The Make It Happen is a goal setting tool which will give you somewhere to start, a process to follow and a way to organise your thoughts so your vision becomes clearer, your actions more focused and your motivation more sustained.
I have noticed that I’m much more likely to achieve something if I make it into a well thought out and planned goal than if I just keep it as an idea seed.
“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.”
Bill Copeland Cricket Umpire
