Do You Know How To Start Living?

Last week I asked you to think big, don’t hold back and write down your innermost dreams.  So now you’re sitting there with a list that includes things like “climb Everest”, “have sex with a supermodel” and “make a million dollars” and you have no clue how to even start.  This seems pretty stupid now, doesn’t it?  You should get back to your day to day issues and forget about your dreams, right?  Wrong!  Goals like these are not stupid, they’re the things that make life worth living.  The question is, how do we make them seem a bit less impossible?

By the way, throughout all of this I’m going to ask you to keep one thing in mind.  Your dreams are NOT impossible.  The moment you start thinking of them as impossible is the moment you give up and accept failure.  I refuse to accept that.  I believe in you and I believe in myself.  More than that, I care about you and I care about me.  I want us to be happy, I want us to feel fulfilled and happy.  I want us to live a happy life with no regrets.  I know how to do this, I just need you to believe in yourself and follow along.

So without further ado…

• What’s stopping you? – Analyze the obstacles.  What’s holding you back?  For example, let’s say you wrote down “meet that special someone”.  What’s stopping you?  Is it a lack of confidence?  A lack of time to meet new people?  Bad personal hygiene?  Whatever it is, write it down.
• Break things down – Now, set up some smaller goals along the way that sound more reasonable.  You’ll be amazed at how much your confidence grows as you achieve these small goals.  For example, you want to climb Everest?   Ok, can you even hike the peak 10 miles from your house?  Sounds like you need to start getting in shape.  Perhaps you should consider climbing that nearby peak to be the more immediate goal while still keeping Everest in the back of your mind.  By the way, ideally these goals match the obstacles you’ve identified.  For example, if you need to get in shape for your mountain climbing, the immediate goal might be to “be able to hike for three hours without needing to rest.”
• Next step – Based on those last two things, you’ll need to figure out what the next step is.  What do you tackle first?  Do you need to start getting in shape or do you need to do some research on mountain climbing?  Do you need to think up a business idea or do you need to start saving more?  Whatever it is, this will become your guide.

Assuming you’re actually doing these exercises and not just ignoring them like you have every other exercise in every other self improvement book you’ve ever read (how’s that working for you by the way?), you should have a table that looks something like this:

Note that my Everest goal actually has two line items here.  That’s fine, sometimes the big goals will have more than one thing you can work on.  In fact, they almost always will.  By breaking down big tasks into smaller ones, we make them more manageable and give ourselves a starting point.

Here’s another example:

Note that the “Not Enough Savings” item actually has 3 different actions after it.  That’s great.  If you have multiple ideas on how you can achieve these immediate goals, write them all down.  If you think of something else later on, add it.  You’re essentially writing down possibilities to follow up on later.

What Now?

Now you have a giant list of to do’s, don’t you?  Seems impossible, doesn’t it?  Actually, it is impossible.  Sorry, were you expecting a different answer?  Don’t worry, I’m not talking about your dreams here, I’m just talking about doing this whole big list at once.  One of the common mistakes people make when they try to change their lives is to do too much at once.  You’ve seen this before, haven’t you?  The friend who realizes their life sucks and then tries to exercise more, eat less, work harder, find a second job, refinance their home, fix up their yard, get a new hair cut, start dating and write a book all at once.  Sorry, but that’s impossible.  I know you want your life to get better RIGHT NOW but that’s just not how it works.  It took you a while to get where you are and it’s going to take you a while to get out of it.  So pick 4 or 5 items, focus on those and move on.  Try to pick the high priority items first.  For example, money helps almost everything.  So if you have a couple of goals focused on making more money, maybe hit those first.  Also try to hit actions that impact multiple goals.  For example, I want to climb mount Everest, run an iron man and get to 180lbs.  All three of these goals will require me to get in better shape.  So perhaps a new exercise program is in order since that will move all three goals forward.

Once you have your actions, start doing them.  Congratulations, you’ve started changing your life

FYI, here’s my action table:

• Items that have no target date are items I have no plan for working on until I’m done with some other stuff.
• Items in bold are the ones I am working on right now.
• Also note that one of my items (get to know my gf) has no action items.  There are some things you really shouldn’t plan too much