Inspiration for a joyful and creative life

What do you wish for in the year ahead?

With all this reflection of the past year, what are some things you would like to do, see or be in the new year ahead?

Here are a few questions you might consider:

• I want to make more time for………
• I want to learn more about…….
• I want to take care of myself by….
• I want to practice being more in the moment so I can  ….
• How can I create more best days and moments this year?

Of course, wishing is only the first step but a very important one.  Taking action on those wishes will make them come true.

You may also enjoy reading my article New Year, New Perspective.

As for me, I am already structuring things so that I can have more time to create, make things, and share them so that I can inspire others to enjoy their creativity.  I plan to blur the lines more between working and playing.

What do you wish for?

Sometimes it is hard to be clear or stay focused on what you want.

One thing that really helped me and some of my clients last year was using a weekly reminder to set the intention for the coming week and to review the previous week with a few simple but powerful questions.

It helped us focus on the positive, gain insights on what was working and how to make little tweaks on things to make them better.

I’m setting up a service to offer you the same benefits.  I’ll let you know when it’s ready to go.  I think it will be a great way to help you keep focused on making your wishes come true.

Have you ever considered what it is costing you to avoid doing what you really want? Procrastination is hard work.

It takes an enormous amount of energy to worry and feel like you should be getting to something but you aren’t.

It is hard work NOT to do anything and it can be harder than taking those small, small steps and realizing your worst fears.

Procrastination is a form of escape that tricks you into thinking you are avoiding danger, even if it is an unconscious decision. The truth is it is like invisible handcuffs that keep you trapped by disappointment in yourself.

Usually the fears are what stop you in the first place. See if any of these ring a bell for you:

• Too many goals
• Fear of failure or making a mistake
• Fear of success….and maybe that will lead to too much work

I’ve personally experienced all of the above. I will probably always have more things I want to do than is humanly possible. But that is just part of my nature.

What I finally started to understand is that choosing one or two goals to fully commit to and take action on is so much easier than worry about if it is the right decision or how it will turn out.

It doesn’t mean that I never worry but since that doesn’t EVER make anything easier or better, I try to keep it to a minimum.

And the biggest antidote to procrastination and worry is taking action with small steps.

Your Worst Fears Realized

Let’s take the above examples and show you that even if your fears are realized, you are still better off trying.

Too Many Goals – If you never choose something, anything to try, you’ll be stuck in the never ending cycle of feeling like you’ve failed.

It is better to pick something and try it and if you decide it’s not for you, luckily you have a lot more ideas where they came from!

Fear of Failure or Making a Mistake – If you fail, if you make a mistake, hey join the party! If you are not failing at least occasionally, you aren’t challenging yourself.

Everyone learns from their mistakes and no one is perfect. Do you know how many successful businesses and people failed before they succeeded? Probably about 99.7%. The rest just got lucky. Cut yourself some slack and go make some mistakes!

Fear of Success – You may worry that if you succeed, it will be too much work or that people will raise their expectations of you and you won’t be able to keep up.

I remember hearing Barbara Winter talking about people worrying about problems they don’t even have yet. She said when you solve one set of problems, you get to upgrade to better ones.

In other words, you can cross that bridge when you come to it. There are solutions to every problem and you do have choices. You can always change what you are doing or even stop.

Take an Empowering Step

Don’t beat yourself up about procrastinating. We all do it at one time or another.

Instead of punishing yourself and feeling like you’ve failed already or you are not living up to your expectations, make a positive choice.

While it will take effort, commitment, and work to complete your goal, I really believe it will be less demanding and draining than the unfulfilled weight of procrastination.

The only way to stop feeling the fear is to face it, to move through it. So take a small step. Just one. And then another and another…….

The other day I enjoyed watching a show on Colorado Public Television called Being Strategic with Erika Andersen.

The show and her book with the same title is about approaching life and business with strategic thought and action.

She is currently on a book tour and graciously agreed to give us a couple of tips.

Sally: In order to begin creating a strategy, you need to have an idea of what direction to start. What do you think is one of the best ways for someone to clarify what they want?

Erika: This is exactly why I encourage folks to begin the process of being strategic by “defining the challenge.”

In my mind, the first step in clarifying what you want is to get clear about what’s not working. For instance, let’s say a small company has a new product that isn’t selling well.

All too often in that situation, people just start proposing solutions: “let’s do a new marketing campaign,” “let’s pump up the sales force,” “let’s make it green instead of blue.”

Instead, we encourage people to ask the simple question, “What’s not working?” The superficial answer might be, “The product’s not selling.”

But if you dig under that a little, ask “what part of the sales process isn’t working?” you might discover that, for instance, that the product’s benefit to the customer isn’t immediately obvious. Ah-ha!

So then you frame that up as a “How can we….?” question: maybe something like “How can we make it drop dead easy for the customer to know how useful the product is?”

Then they know what direction to start: once they know what their challenge is, they can then get as clear as possible on their current state relative to that challenge – where they’re starting from.

Once they’ve done that, they can envision “what they want,” in your words. That is, the future in which their challenge has been addressed: where the customers know exactly what the product is capable of doing, and they’re excited about it!

Sally: I think a lot of people are afraid to “dream big” because it may seem too far out of reach, but then maybe they aren’t thinking big enough. How would you suggest they hold a big enough vision to excite them?

There’s a phrase we use: “reasonable aspiration.” I love it because it so simply describes the “sweet spot” for visioning. One the one hand, you want your vision to be inspirational. That is, you want it to feel like a stretch: it’s not your current reality, and you’re really going to have to focus, work your plan, and be attentive to serendipity in order to achieve it.

But on the other hand, it needs to be reasonable. That is, you have to be able to look at your vision objectively and say there are not any un-overcome-able obstacles to achieving it.

My favorite example of UNreasonable aspiration are the contestants on American Idol who simply cannot sing – they can’t sing, and clearly don’t have the ability to learn to sing – and their vision is to be the next American singing sensation!

So, if you hold a vision that’s a ‘reasonable aspiration’ for you – it will probably feel big enough to be exciting.

Sally: I would add that if it really seems out of reach, to look at what you like about that idea and there still may be aspects of that vision that are a ‘reasonable aspiration’.

Erika, thanks for taking the time to give us these tips on Being Strategic!

Check out her website and get her book for more information.

Erika Andersen is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that helps client organizations clarify and move toward their hoped-for-future. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBC Universal, Union Square Hospitality Group, and Cablevision Corporation. Andersen is the author of Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers (Portfolio, 2006) and Being Strategic: Plan for Success; Outthink Your Competitors; Stay Ahead of Change (St. Martin’s Press, May 2009), and the author and host of Being Strategic with Erika Andersen on Public Television.

You can find out more at www.erikaandersen.com

P.S. If you need help with figuring out a better way or what to do next, email me for an idea session. I’d love to help you!