What to do when you don't know what you goals are
I did some lives on the Small Biz Mama Facebook page this week, and I was recently talking about not waiting until January to start getting rid of the habits that you have that are keeping you from getting what you want. Don't wait until January. Start now if you have no idea what to do when you don't know what your goals should be.
How do you figure out what your goals are
If you have no idea where to start or even what are things that are holding you back, I will show you what to do.
I know for a lot of you this is a season where either your at home with your kids, you're hating your job, or maybe you've lost your job. And you're trying to figure out what you are going to do next?
Some of you have lost direction with your business. You've needed to pivot. And you're not really sure what the next thing is.
I'm going to give you two ways that you can do this that will help get your brain going.
Find a quiet place to figure out what your goals are
First off you have to be in the right mind frame to do this. This is not an activity that you do when the kids are running around or when your spouse or significant other is talking to you.
This is something that you need to do in a quiet place with a nice cup of coffee or tea uninterrupted. If you don't have a lot of support to help you, this is something that you do really early in the morning, late at night after the kids have gone to bed, or during nap time if your kids nap.
Turn off the notifications on your phone. Don't have the TV or radio on. Don't have anything. I know that that's really hard. And I know that you probably don't like being in that space where it's completely quiet because then you have to sit with your brain. We need you to sit with your brain for this one. Okay? You need that.
Ten areas of your life you need to focus on when choosing what your goals are
Take out a notebook or a journal or a piece of paper. I want you to write down these 10 areas of your life. Now, for some of you, you might say this doesn't apply or this isn't important. Just write them all down. Write down:
- Health
- Mental and emotional
- Partner or love
- Family
- Friends
- Mission
- Experiences
- Spirit
- Finances
- Learning
This list is based on the work of Brendon Burchard. And I know that now you've got a whole bunch of questions. If you're like me, you're thinking this doesn't apply, that doesn't apply, I don't know what this is.
You don't have to work on all of these. Let's go through these really quickly, just so that you can define what they mean and how they might work for you.
What I want you to do after you've learned what each one means and how it might work for you is to rank them on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 the best.
1. Health
Health is your physical health. How are you feeling? How is your health? So think about your physical health right now. On a scale of one to 10, where do you think you are? Don't overthink it. Just give it a number.
2. Mental and Emotional
How are you doing mentally? What are your emotions like? Don't overthink it, but be honest with yourself. Where are you?
3. Partner and Love
You might be thinking, "I'm single. I don't have a partner." So then this would become the love category. For you it might be self-love. It might be how well are you loving others?
If you are seeking a relationship, where are you with that? How is that going on a scale of one to 10? What does that look like for you?
4. Family
Number four is family. How are things going with your relationships with your family on a scale of one to 10.
5. Friends
Rate how are things with your friends.
6. Mission
The next one is mission. So notice on this list, there's nothing about career. There's nothing about business. You might not even know what your mission is.
My mission has kind of evolved. Currently, my mission is to help moms create more margin in their lives. And the primary way that I do that is through Bookkeeper Training School.
If you think about what your mission in life is, it might be:
- raise your kids
- build a business that creates financial stability
- bring joy to people through crafting
- Take stress off of your customer's plates by making sure their IT works properly
- Help business owners run their businesses more smoothly
7. Experiences
Are you experiencing life for you? And I know right now you're thinking nobody's experiencing anything. Because we're all at home. Are you know getting out and seeing nature? Do you just go for drives? Maybe it's just going out to your backyard and light a fire in the fire pit and just be together.
A lot of times for me experiences have to do with being present. I have two businesses and I'm still teaching. And trying to keep up with everything going on around the house, a lot of times just feels like I'm not there. And so for me, sometimes that experience is just being present.
So what does that look like for you on a scale of one to ten.
8. Spirit
Spirit is different than mental and emotional because there are days where you are having a good day mentally, but your spirit is just not there. I think this one's really hard to explain. For me, spirit is kind of the underlying tone.
On a scale of one to ten, how is that underlying piece of you?
9. Finances
In your finances, where are you are on a scale of one to ten.
10. Learning
This one is really, really important to me. Learning doesn't have to be a formalized program. What are you reading? What are you consuming? How is that helping you be the type of person that you want to be?
If you have a big deficit in learning, it may be part of the reason why you have deficits in the other areas. I think learning is going to tie into your other component as you're going through this process.
For instance, your finances aren't good. What do you need to learn about money in order to get your finances where they need to be. Or what do you need to learn about your mental and emotional health in order to improve them?
Learning is really going to tie into those other pieces. What you read and consume will help you be the type of person you want to be.
For me, none of these ever hit a 10, because I feel like there is always something that can improve.
How to choose what your goals are
If any of these areas don't resonate with where you are right now, you can leave them off the list and make your list shorter. That's totally okay.
There are two different ways that you can look at this list:
- You can help strengthen some of the things that are pretty good.
- Or you can improve on the things where the numbers are really low.
Now mind you, you're not going to tackle all of these at one time. You just can't. But what you can do is work on one or two of them, and then you do this check-in on a regular basis. This will help the other ones go up.
Try to pick one or two of these which if you worked on them, would help improve the others. So for example, it is really hard to have a good spirit when your physical and mental health is not in a good place. It is very hard to really pour into your relationships with either your partner, your family, your friends, or when your spirit is really damaged.
And so when you look at these things, I want you to think about where one area is affecting other areas.
When you give yourself a low score, I want you to start thinking about what is causing that? Why is that occurring?
For me, when I am not walking outside on a regular basis, my health suffers, my mental health suffers, my spirit suffers, which means that I'm less likely to like reach out to people. I think my mission suffers because my energy levels suffer. And so there's this cascading effect.
What are things that you would regret not doing
You need quiet space to think about all these things. You have really got to think that if you were on your death bed, what are the things that you would regret not doing? Sit with that.
As I was thinking about that, this morning and I said, "Okay. For me, it would be not being present." Not being present for my spouse and family, as much as I want to be. It would also be not taking better care of my health. There's a lot of things I want to learn.
This focus becomes habits that then becomes what your goals are
When you think about what are these things you would regret, this is the start of habits.
What habits do you need to create to be the person you want to be?
Or what habits do you need to eliminate to be the person you want to be?
That's ultimately how goals start. And so if you think about, what you would regret if you were on your death bed right now. What would you regret?
As you write all these things down, you can then focus on what you need to do to change it. So, if I'm talking about being more present, I need to put my phone down. I need to say I am no longer at work.
Now you have all these are the things that you need to do. You now have something to work on. Habits to create. And you have things to do to help you get there.
Start now defining what your goals are!
You're probably thinking it's not the new year. Can't I just wait until January? No. No, you can't. It doesn't matter when you're reading this post. You can start today. You can start right now.
Maybe you're reading this in November. Or in December. Maybe you're reading this in February and you're saying, "Well, I missed January, so I missed my opportunity."
I just want to tell you that you haven't missed the opportunity. Because the opportunity can start right now. There's no arbitrary date that you have to start these things. So why wait?
