There are two very simple ingredients that you need in order to achieve what you want.
Drumroll, please.
They are Intention and Action.
So simple, almost too obvious. But it’s funny how often we forget.
It’s not uncommon for us to have a desire, a vision or a goal for ourselves, but fail to follow through with consistent action to move us towards it.
New years’ resolutions anyone? You know the drill. You set a goal, like “I want to get fit’. You turn up at the gym a few times, maybe keep it going for a week or two. But then something else pops up, it gets hard, and in a month, we’ve forgotten our goal and have gone back to our old ways of sleeping in or staying home to binge on Netflix instead.
Without any action, our dreams stay as dreams. It just becomes wishful thinking.
On the other hand, sometimes we can get so hung up on ‘doing’ that we lose track of why we’re doing something in the first place.
We fill up our plate and ‘to do’ lists with so many ‘good’ things to do, that we forget to stop and reflect. Is our activity is focusing us towards our goals or just taking up our time and giving us the appearance of being busy and productive?
Social media can sometimes be a trap in this respect. As business owners, we know that it’s good to stay engaged and share our journey with our peeps on social media. However, in the pursuit of making sure we share something on social media, we may forget to keep our messaging consistent or fail to mention what we’re selling. Or we just spend so much time making sure our images look pretty that we don’t have time to do the ‘real’ work.
Action without any intent is just ‘busy work’.
It’s like being on a treadmill, going through the motions but without anywhere else to go.
So, if you want to make sure you get what you want, remember to:
1. Decide what you want.
Set a goal for yourself. Create a vision of where you want to be over the next few months or years. Dream about the direction you want to head in.
2. Take consistent action that’s aligned with your intention.
It’s not enough to do one thing towards your goal. You need to take step after step. Create a routine or habit to create that consistency. Keep moving towards your vision no matter how small the step. The aim is to keep moving towards your goal.
3. Check in to make sure that you’re taking aligned action.
Stop to reflect every now and again to reaffirm your goal and make sure that it’s still relevant to what you want. And check that you’re also taking action that’s aligned with your goal. See where you can make things easier for yourself so you can turn it into a habit or part of your routine.
Next time you’d like to make a change in your life or business, make sure that you include these two vital ingredients: intention and action. Otherwise, you may end up succumbing to unfocused action or ‘busy work’. Or at the other extreme, having an intention without backing it up with action becomes wishful thinking. Check in regularly to see that you’re staying on track to taking aligned action.
Your Fresh Start 12 Week Planner contains these two ingredients to help you get what you want. It walks you through a creative goal setting section to identify a 12 week goal. It also has a calendar, habit tracker and weekly planner to help you take action towards your goal; as well as review and reflection points where you reaffirm your goal and work out what steps you need to take next. Head to the shop to find out more.
