Ever feel like you are just drifting through life with no clear idea of where you want to go or where you want to end up? Afua Adom knows exactly how that feels. Here she figures out how to turn her feeling of no direction into one direction, or at least some direction… (You know a One Direction joke had to be shoehorned in there somewhere…)
It’s Spring – again. The time when we’re all supposed to be really positive and think of all the great things that we want to do this year. It’s a time for resolutions – hope, planning and positivity. But what if, when April 1st rolls around you got… nothing. You try and think of some goals, some stuff you want to get done this year and you literally have nothing. What if you have NO GOALS? No direction and literally no idea of what you want to do with your life? Believe me this is more common than you realise. I know this because… I can’t believe I’m about to write this… this happened to me. For the past few months I’ve felt goal-less. After having a pretty rough 2014, towards the end of the year I felt like I didn’t know what I wanted or where I wanted to go. So how do I recover from my annus horribilis and get my goal-making mindset back?
Jill McCulloch (coachyou.co.uk) is a life coach with over 20 years experience. The first thing she told me was to figure out what was important to me and to not worry if it was on a personal or professional level. “Values are the fundamental, emotional and activating principles of a person,” she says. “Your values are the elements in your life which give you a sense of deep satisfaction. Deciphering your values brings them into your conscious mind and helps in making decisions and creating goals. For example my value of ‘independence’ means choosing how I spend my time, choosing who I work with and being my own boss. When we live according to our values, we are being true to ourselves and passionate about what we do.”So I sat down and I wrote down what were my values – happiness, family time, independence, stronger relationships were all at the top of the list. That’s all very well and good but how do I GET the things I want.
Jill says, “It is important to create goals aligned to our values. Often creating goals is driven by self-limiting beliefs or Gremlins. Gremlins are the soundtrack running in our minds, which are often the voices of people from our past with their opinions of us; their fears and aspirations. They may have been well meaning, meant to motivate or protect us. Gremlins often translate as should, must or need. So, ‘I should stay in this job to protect my pension’ is a goal driven by Gremlin and sadly unlikely to bring us fulfilment in the long term. Neuroscience states that we can consciously change our neural pathways. By ‘noticing’ our gremlins we are better able to make different, more positive choices. Self-limiting beliefs are tricky to spot for yourself.
Ah, the Gremlins. Those fuzzy creatures don’t just multiply when water hits them, they also hold you back from the positive thinking needed to get to where you need to be. I must admit I have a lot of Gremlins in my head. No I don’t hear voices (not anymore) but I would say I am the queen of self-sabotage. Gremlins do not serve you. It’s hard to kick them out of your head but when you do you can really free yourself to a whole new way of thinking. Once you’ve figured out what values you have and how those align with your goals, it’s time to make your goals visual.“Write a clear idea of what you want your future to look like,” Jill says. “Not just in a business/career plan but every aspect of your life. Write what it will bring you. Be clear how achieving this vision will make you feel. Aligning your mind, emotions and body to this vision helps you stay on track and get over the roadblocks along the way. A good way is to create a collage of images, which portray the vision. Looking at the big picture of your vision regularly, maintains the excitement and motivation for pulling another late night to just get it done.”
Having no direction is not the worst thing in the world but it can feel really scary to be adrift and not know where you want to end up or how you want to get there. For me the key was to remember that everything and anything is possible, your goals don’t have to be about your career or how much money you want to have in the bank. Figure out your values, figure out what’s important to you and make your own goals from there. Make 2015 your year – I certainly intend to.
