Getting from where you are now to where you want to be: to achieve a life of your dreams, is like travelling from A to B. Where are you now in your life?

Planning for success

Like any adventure or journey, the process of getting from A to B involves planning.  The old saying is true ‘If you don’t know where you’re going to, how can you know when you’ve got there?’

Goals: the essence of B

We’ve already looked at B.  B was about setting goals – where you want to be.

[See Two free goal setting worksheets for your life goals, Is Goal Setting Useless unless Up Close and Personal, Why Set Goals for Yourself?  How to Change Your Life]

So what’s A?

A is where you are now in your life, your starting point.

Stop! Who cares about that? It’s where you want to get to that’s important surely?  Well, yes and no.  You do need to know where you are going to, that’s true, but it also helps to know where you are now.

Understanding A – So why know where are you now in your life?

• Your starting point holds the key to understanding why you may not have achieved your goals in the past
  
• Looking at your life now provides insights into the habits, values and beliefs you hold about about yourself and the world
  
• Identifying positive values and beliefs is helpful for getting clarity about your goals and increasing their achievement when aligned to your values
• Recognising negative beliefs and values allows you to learn from your experiences and begin to understand where you need to do things differently.   Likewise not learning from your experiences makes you liable to repeat similar behaviour time and again – a Groundhog Day with an endless cycle of replaying the same mistakes and getting the same results
  
• Letting go of old patterns of thinking and behaviour enables you to think more freely and confidently about the future

So what is your A?

This will be a combination of the everyday occurrences of our daily lives; the ‘daily grind’, the things that get in the way of doing what we want in life, and the beliefs, values and habits that underpin our behaviour and actions.

What are they for you?

We’ll look at how to identify our beliefs and values in more detail in our next post.

‘Til then, why not tell your friends about this post by liking it.