What goals have you set your sights on?
It is important to remember regularly what you are trying to achieve, what your goals are, where your dreams lie. In today’s busy workplaces, it is far too easy to get lost in the busyness of someone else’s priorities.
With the advances of technology over the past couple of decades, communication has become instantaneous, and people are looking for answers in about the same amount of time. From the late night frantic phone calls to the early morning tidal wave of emails, it is far too easy to get caught up in the mad rush without pausing to see where you are rushing to. If you mention in a passing conversation that you are busy putting out fires, every busy professional can relate. But there is one fire we shouldn’t put out. Those kindling embers of your dreams need to be nurtured, not extinguished.
How do you stay focused?
If you’ve ever been camping, or spent time around a campfire, you will from time to time see someone blowing on the coals. See, when a fire starts burning out, often you can revive it by blowing air on the coals. The additional oxygen helps keep the fire lit.
Our dreams are no different, you need constant air blowing on the coals to keep your flame lit, to keep your dream alive.
But when we spend our days reacting to other people’s demands, other people’s priorities, we often forget to take a deep breath, and blow some life back into our own dreams.
Staying focused on what you want to achieve can be hard. Constant reminders about what is important to you helps fan the flames of success.
To stay focused on your own dreams, you need to take a moment every day to reflect on what it is that is truly important to you. Some of the questions I ask myself every day are:
What are my dreams? Why are they important to me? What can I do today to work towards those goals?
Take some time and think about how these questions fall into your own life. Are you spending enough time focused on your dreams?
Taking time to ask yourself questions like these is essential. But how can you take a moment in quiet self reflection when the world is burning down around you?
Finding Focus Through Your Environment
Often it is difficult to remember to step out of our routines to think about what we are actually doing. As we run from meeting to meeting, remembering to pause and reflect on what we were planning to achieve today can be a challenge. To assist us against ourselves, we need to design our environment with little reminders of our true objectives.
For example, I have a large whiteboard set up with my goals and plans. Seeing this whiteboard daily helps me remember what I need to achieve next. But of course, I am not always home and able to see the whiteboard. For those moments I have signed up for daily emails that prompt me to think bigger, to contemplate topics that will grow not just my business, but more importantly, will grow myself. Sprinkling reminders about my goals and dreams throughout my day helps keep me focused on my goals, allowing ideas to germinate and bloom while I am fighting other people’s fires.
Many of us do not have the luxury to chase our goals and priorities all day, every day. Often we find ourselves in careers and positions when we need to put someone else’s priorities ahead of our own, if only to pay the bills. While there is nothing wrong with this, it is during these days that we need to remain extra vigilant that we also allocate some focus and energy to our own goals and priorities. It is far too easy to find yourself swept up in the whirlwind and raging inferno of other people’s problems. Without reminding yourself daily as to what your goals are, and what you can do to make progress, those burning embers of your dreams will go cold.
Take-away:
Ask yourself these questions each day:
- What are my dreams?
- Why are they important to me?
- What can I do today to work towards those goals?
Answering these questions will help you remain focused, fanning the flames of your own success. But there will still be days that threaten to overwhelm your good intentions. Sprinkle little reminders about what your goals are throughout your day. These reminders can be as obvious as a 6 foot whiteboard, or as subtle as a mid-afternoon alarm that triggers you to take a moment and reflect on what you are doing, and if that is helping your goals or not.