“Failing to plan is like planning to fail.”
This is a motto I teach my students often. Not taking the time to audit your life and see what needs to change or get removed is like planning a road trip before you put wheels on your car. To get the most from the new year, you must spend time with yourself, taking stock of what you want to do, who you want to be and where you want to go. Doing this will improve your year drastically and help you stay focused as you push for your goals.
Breaking things down to their smallest size is the way forward regarding goal setting. By doing this, you are giving yourself a fighting chance of making your dreams come true. For example, “I want to be healthier in 2024” should turn into “In 2024, I will take a 45-minute walk every morning, five days a week to become healthier.”
This level of specificity is helpful as it means you now know what you are trying to achieve, why you want to achieve it and how you will achieve it. The goal now has a time, place, and system. You now know the form of exercise you will use, walking and the duration it will take from your day. You can now plan what time to wake up based on your goal and daily schedule.
The quickest way to kill a dream or ensure it never makes it out of your vision board is by failing to break it down into a tangible action you can take. Vagueness leads to assumptions and unrealistic expectations. For example, if you do not specify how long it will take to walk 2km a day, you will underestimate how early you may need to wake up and thus find yourself running late for work or school because you assumed.
In 2024, we must realise the power of taking action and becoming active rather than passive participants. We have the right to choose our happiness and commit to it through the goals we set.
A wise man once said, “The law of attraction is nothing without the law of action.” Only speaking about things doesn’t make them happen; you must pair them with intentional action. Thus, I hope 2024 is a year of success, growth, peace and happiness for you and that you have the systems around you to make your wildest dreams come true.
