If you are in a headspace anything like what I was in, it can feel impossible to even get started with pursuing a dream. The resistance that is stacked before you feels like an immovable wall that you just can’t seem to get through. Fear not! This is a problem that prevents many from starting but one that can be overcame with some forethought and a strategic approach. This can be broken down into five easy steps that will help you break through the resistance barrier and get the ball rolling towards your dreams!
Step one: Take stock of your average day, the purpose of this is not to judge yourself but to just understand where your time is going. As you start to list out your daily activities think through if you could take some time from various leisure activities to invest towards your goals. Or perhaps you notice that you could free up some time in the morning by getting up earlier. You don’t have to make a decision right now this step is mainly about becoming conscious of how your time is being spent.
Step Two: Now that you have evaluated your day to day activities you should have a rough idea of where you could start doing some work on your goals. Now you can start to think about what it is that you need to do to accomplish your dream. Since you are just getting started you need to be thinking about the initial steps to get the ball rolling. This should result in a simple short routine that you can repeat which starts moving you in the right direction (for example if you want to write a book you start writing a hundred words a day). Yes when you zoom out you will likely see that it would take forever to accomplish your goal with the initial routine and that is okay this step is all about breaking through the resistance and starting.
Step Three: Okay you have been working towards your goal for a little while now consistently (it is essential that you get consistent before moving on from step two) now it is time to start refining your process. Zoom out mentally on what it is you are trying to achieve and think about what you could add to your routine to start seeing more real world progress. This might be as simple as going from writing one hundred words to two hundred and slowly building your way up. This step is about pushing your process to see how much you can get done in any given day in a repeatable manor.
Step Four: Once you are starting to do more and more for your consistent routine it is time to evaluate your results. This should have some time dedicated to it to ensure that you do a proper evaluation. You then use this evaluation to make adjustments to your routine to keep getting closer and closer to that dream of yours.
Step Five: Zoom out even further and find the next thing you need to learn or accomplish to get you to where you want to be. Back to the writing example if you get to where you are writing a thousand words a day and making great progress in that sense. Now is the time to think about what do you want to do with it? Start a blog? Write a book? You likely already know which of these you want to do so start looking into the how. How do you get a book published or even edited.
Step Six: Go through these steps as many times as you need to until your goal is accomplished. Things will likely evolve overtime so ensuring that you run through this process often can help you catch issues early on.
This process can take many iterations before you finally achieve what it is you sought out to do. But this is a journey and it’s important to enjoy the bumps and bruises along the way and having a process like this can help you stay organized and get through the hard days a little more easily by just slipping into a process.
Let me know if you would approach this differently in the comments below. Follow for updates on when new posts go live!