So you’ve sat down, you’ve dreamed big dreams and written down your goals. You might be embarrassed because your friends would laugh. Even now, looking at the page, if you dreamed the biggest dreams your heart and mind could you might find them, in your everyday conscious mind, pies in the sky. If you do, that’s good. It means you are heading towards the greatest things you hope for. If you don’t that could well be because you know you’ve known of your dreams long enough to be comfortable with them.

It’s important to discover what you need to do. Start with the big one- How do you climb Mount Everest? Well, how do you? You discover the answers by asking questions.

When you ask questions, you gain more information about the things you need to achieve the goal you’ve set- the answers themselves provide the milestones. Your exercise today is simple.

Take the goals you’ve written down and ask yourself five essential questions.

Who?

What?

How?

Why?

When?

How is the most powerful of these questions. “How will I do this?” presupposes already that you are going to do this, and it’s this commitment that will lead you on.

Now take your list of milestones, look at it carefully, and right now, take the first step. You’ve already proved that you can.

Tom.

You can see, from the previous posts and exercises it is easy to do simple things, and doing just one thing a day leads to achieving major goals over time. It doesn’t matter how big the task is, it requires simple steps to achieve. Today, we’ll begin devising the goals you have in life and breaking them down into easy to manage steps that you can take on every day.

You have to devise long term goals to break down, without these you’ll meander through each day the same as the last. There are five aspects to our lives that have to be maintained.

Career.
What is it you want to do? Income is only part of this equation. For a career to be fulfilling it has to add some meaning to your life, as well as financial reward. What do you want out of your career, and what would you pursue as your ideal career?

Financial.
Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it sure goes a long way. How much do you need to live comfortably, afford yourself a future, and make your growth possible? A thousand dollars a week, a million? How much do you want?

Health
Nothing else matters in your life if you cannot enjoy it. This covers fitness, diet and emotional well being. Do you want to be able to run marathons when you’re sixty? Play ice hockey? Do you really think sitting in front of the TV will make this possible?

Relationships.
No man is an island- would you like to be able to communicate better with friends, have a stronger more passionate relationship with your partner? Would you like to know your parents better? What do you want out of your associations with people?

Recreation.
You work to live, but how would you like to live? Would you like to learn to Dance? Build a Yacht? When you finish your days work what do you want to do?

Your exercise for today is to write a sentence on each of these topics- find out for yourself what you want from your life, but remember; Dream big. There are no foolish goals. One of the most startling people I’ve met is an eighty year old woman, who had not a wrinkle and glowed with perfect health as she told me how at sixty she’d climbed to base camp on Everest with her daughter.

Dream big and live the dream.

BT Cassidy

   So you did what I asked you to yesterday, right? You sat down and did something to make the things you talk about, the things you hope for, happen, right? If you didn’t you’ve got to ask yourself, is that which you said you wanted to do, something you really want to do?                

“Do or do not, there is not try”- Yoda  

   Decisions aren’t things you articulate with words. If you say it, and do nothing towards achieving your goal immediately you’re just saying it. Trying is a nonsense word, you either do something, or tell people a story when you don’t do it. “Oh, it’s just not the right time, I don’t feel as though I’ve got the skills, blah, blah, blah,”    

   You can go out and get the skills.   

   You can develop situations to make the time right.   

   There is always a step you can take to making your dreams come true. There’s always another way and opportunity, and both of these are products of your actions- your decisions.   

   For those of you that did do yesterdays exercise, congratulations, you’ve made a decision, and have stepped a little closer to your goal, you’ve done something to change the circumstances so you can move one step further forward.   

   Now take the next step with today’s exercise.  

    Take a sheet of paper.               

   Write on the top, your goal, that thing you really want to achieve. Underline it three times.               

   Write underneath that what you did yesterday to make that happen.               

   Write underneath this what you can do today, then do it.               

   After you’ve done it, write underneath that, “Today I took one step closer to achieving [insert goal here] by [insert what you did today].”

   And you’ve made one more step along the way to making your dreams come true. 

Selah.

Have you ever noticed it takes actions to get results? Not just one action; one thing is generally a goal, “I want to become the worlds greatest basketball player,” Accomplishing this is a series of actions. Each action is a single entity though. “To be become the worlds greatest basketball player I have to practice now,” if you think this every day, and do it, you will generate results.

Discipline is purely a word to describe repeating a practice; repeating a practice is merely finding enough energy to do it today, and today, and today, and so on.

Don’t worry about doing it tomorrow, you get one day at a time to fill with your accomplishments; plan for tomorrow, but don’t focus on it. Don’t pay too much mind to words like Discipline, and Can, and Can’t, and Try- just do things.

Today’s exercise is simple, and will prove the point.

-Think of something you’ve been meaning to do.
Discuss a pay rise with your boss, learn to fly an airplane, play the moonlight sonata backwards at midnight in Central Park, whatever you want. Don’t think of it in terms of what other people think you should do, live the life you choose.

Right, got it?

-Now think of something you can do right now to make that happen.
You might have to make a phone call, make a date, or find resources. Make sure you do it, right now. The boss won’t care if you make one phone call, nor will they care if you google something. Just take the first step.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step”- Lao Tzu, Tao-Te Ching

   Beginning something new is never easy. We think of each step as something independent of the one before, and the achievements we’ve made in the past fade into insignificance when we’re faced with a new obstacle. My name is BT Cassidy, and I think we’re somewhat alike.

   We both seek results, don’t we? We both seek better results than those which we’re are currently achieving. That’s why you’ve read this far, isn’t it?

   Self help programs provide a great resource, but the changes they propose are often hard to include in your life, there’s so many of them, and they seem so in depth as to be very difficult to bring into everyday life without long and considered action.

   You’re busy, I’m busy, so lets make it quick and easy, a small dose every day- and that’s just what this blog is- Every day, I will provide one point, one thing to do. That if you do it, will reinforce each point along the way and lead to a healthier, stronger and more vibrant life- the life you want to lead.

   No Bullshit, three minutes reading and results- this is what we all need.

Selah

Tom