Your Goals and Dreams Simplified and Achievable

If you feel like where you want to be is so far from where you are, take heart. It’s most likely not as far as it seems. Our goals and dreams can seem too far away because it’s hard to imagine where we haven’t yet been.

Every voyage feels that way at first. If you want to travel the world, that’s far away too. But to get to where you want to go follows a relatively simple process of logical steps. One step at a time, one day at a time.

The day is the way to achieve the life you want to live.™

All Goals are Simply Destinations

If the first stop on your world tour is Costa Rica, that becomes your first goal and from there you simply break down the steps needed to get to Costa Rica. Then for the next country on your itinerary, you go through the same process. That’s your next goal, broken down into manageable steps.

The same process works for your dreams. We love the journey analogy for there are indeed many parallels to goals and travel. Your dream is the experience you wish to have. Your goal is your destination for that experience.

If you have yet traveled there, it can seem harder to plot the course and to know what to expect. Certainly, it can be hard to imagine yourself there experiencing that place. But employ the tools at your command. Research, plan and take action, and the more you immerse in this daily, the more real your trip feels even before your departure.

Dreams are achieved through goal setting. Goals bring dreams to life.

To get where you want to go, learn from those who’ve been there.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

Achievable Steps

Until you achieve your dreams… that next place on the horizon of your life, it can be hard to know what you need to do to get there.

However, the good news is that you don’t have to know it all to get started. And there’s more good news: you don’t have to know how to do it all to arrive. You just need to commit to learning and doing… learning and doing… daily.

All goals are simply destinations, broken down into achievable steps.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com

The Extra of Ordinary

You will need to commit to being extraordinary. But chances are you won’t feel extraordinary. Hard work doesn’t feel extraordinary… at first. It may just feel hard.

Sure… in the beginning you’ll be fired up and excited and that will sustain you. Until. Until you look up at the road before you and see the distance yet to travel. Too many are the remnants left scattered on the wayside of broken dreams.

The day in and day out grind… the long hours and clouded vision, all seem ordinary and even preposterous at times. You’ll have doubts… many doubts along the way. Most give up as their resolve loses sight of their vision, obscured by clouds of tired uncertainty.

Friends, family and even your own psyche may be trying to protect you from unknown danger, and even the threat of your achievement, for it may compromise the comfort of their ordinary lives. But to achieve your dreams requires pushing through to new vistas of personal development, of learning, of effort, and of positive influences in your life.

At this point, you may also try to convince yourself that there’s nothing wrong with ordinary. And you’re right. There is nothing wrong with living an ordinary life. Unless you harbor shadows of regret that nibble away at the sunshine in your heart.

Hard work over time, guided by vision, leads to extraordinary.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com

Goals and Dreams – Simplified

7 Steps for Making Dreams Real

1. DREAM: Where do you want to be in a year?
2. PLAN: Anchor your dream into quarterly and monthly macro goals.
3. ORGANIZE: Create weekly and daily micro goals from those.
4. DO: Get started.
5. LEARN: Learn and adjust
6. PERSIST: Keep on going.
7. REPEAT: Tweak this plan each day, week, month and quarter

Just like planning an actual trip, there are a number of things you need to do to get from where you are to where you want to go. It’s the same thing with achieving your goals and dreams. These seven simple steps are expanded below.

We like to speak of goals as dreams, because dreams inspire visioning, and visioning creates in mental matter which ever precedes manifestation.

When you think of your goals as dreams, it requires you to elevate your thinking.
When you think of your dreams as goals to achieve, it simplifies your achieving.
~LeAura Alderson, co-author-iCreateDaily 90 Day Goals Journal

Goals and Dreams – Amplified

To rev up and amplify our dreams, requires that we level up the intensity, commitment and dedication to living the self we aspire to be. It requires that we energize that vision daily through the thought and deed.

Who are You in Your Dreams?

Who will you be, what will you be doing, what kind of friends and activities are a part of your future self? Fill in the blank to this question around who you want to be, do, create, have, or have done.

Fill in the blank: When I have ‘arrived’, I will  _______.” (Be, do, have, create, etc)

Here Are the 7 Steps Expanded:

DREAMING AND PLANNING

1. DREAM: Write a list of your goals and dreams. Don’t audit them as you write. You can edit and refine those later.
ACTION: Fill in the blank:  “Where do I want to be by this time next year?”

2. PLAN: Your dream becomes your annual goal. Start planning your “trip” there. Plan how to reach that destination. Break that it into quarterly and monthly goals.
ACTION: Set your annual, quarterly, and monthly goals. 
NOTE: If you get stuck or overwhelmed by trying to plan out the year, then start with the week or month instead.

3. ORGANIZE: Your monthly goals are further divided into weekly goals, which become daily goals. Don’t worry about perfect order and plan, as the best-laid plans always change in the “field”.
ACTION: Set your first month’s goal.

DOING AND LEARNING

4. DO: Work the steps of your goals. You’ve identified the top, most important things you need to do to reach your goal. Now you just need to get started, and keep working through the “segments” of the “trip” to your destination, refining and updating it as you go.
ACTION: Create your day’s plan from your week’s goal; refine it each day for the next day.

5. LEARN: Each stage of your journey will involve learning more about each area of pursuit. But the good news is that you don’t have to have it all figured out in advance. You can create the best plan you can conceive at this point in time, and head in that direction. The best learning will occur in the journey, not before.
ACTION: At day’s end, ask yourself: “What positives did I achieve toward my goal today?”

PERSISTENCE AND PERSEVERANCE

6. PERSIST: The one thing all great success stories have in common is perseverance. To arrive at your destination requires that you proceed in the journey, daily. And yes, there are times when you will need to adjust, tweak and course correct.
ACTION: At the beginning of each day, ask yourself: “What one thing can I do toward my goals today.”

7. REPEAT: Tweak each day as needed. Tweak each week at week’s end, and each month at month’s end. Regularly repeat this refinement and tweaking.

GOAL SETTING:
If you get stuck or overwhelmed by trying to plan out the year, then start with the week, month or quarter instead.

Tools for the Journey

This simple 7 step process works for the micro daily and weekly goals—and the macro—monthly, quarterly and annual—goals. Where the rubber meets the road is in the doing and learning… doing and learning. If you need help, we use the 90 Day Goals Journal for setting and tracking goals, and Toggl time tracker for helping us stay on track and account for our time.

Here’s an excellent article by one of our favorite authors, Steven Pressfield, on how the dreams come first and then the resistance. We all need to work through the resistance, which often comes disguised as excuses.

Become your future self now and your future will arrive in the wake of your becoming.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

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