One of the main reasons that people don't succeed with their goals is that they set the goals they think they *should* set – rather than choosing something that truly lights them up inside. It's all about designing your dream – the one you want!
I have worked in businesses where I felt a strong call to the mission and I have worked in businesses just for the money. The businesses that I deeply cared about were not only more profitable, but my personal quality of life was higher because I was excited to get up and get to work each day.
The problem I see with a lot of clients is that they just haven't taken the time to dig deep and discover what they really want. It is easy to choose generic goals (make 100K), but that doesn't help them discover what they really want in life.
Designing Your Dream
To create an ultimate goal—your dream lifestyle—you need to identify and choose the best “big dream” for you.
Let’s try the “What if…” game.
Imagine you have no limits to what you can:
- Spend
- Do
- Achieve
- Attempt
Imagine you have perfect health.
Now imagine you are a perfect age.
What is your perfect age?
Put serious thought into this. What age were you the happiest? What age would you like to be forever? What age bracket would you like to redo with what you know now?
Most of us would like to be a younger age but perhaps retaining the wisdom we’ve earned over a lifetime. But then again, some people immediately visualize themselves as ten years old, winning awards on their dream pony and wishing they could stay in that moment. Others want to retreat to the preschool years when everything was safe, happy, and simple. Others want to go back and experience the wild youth they never had because they married too young and had a family straight away. Others missed out on having children and would love to be twenty-five and expecting a first child.
If you let your emotions answer, after first establishing the fact that you have no limits and you are in perfect health, you may surprise yourself with what answers you come up with.
No, I'm not really asking you to go back and channel your inner 6-year-old.
Obviously no one can go back and be six years old and that's not the point. The point is to connect with that vision of your perfect age bracket and explore it further, you can identify what it is about that age that symbolizes perfect happiness to you.
For example, one online entrepreneur got in touch with her preschool self and found passion and inspiration. She took her dry online art lessons and gave her business new joy and meaning by showing her students how they could “reconnect with their inner child”. Now she teaches her students to paint intuitively. This one small change ignited by an untapped passion changed the direction of her business.
