Last updated on December 22nd, 2011 at 09:16 am
Planning can get pretty messy
As part of our humongous goal-setting session, my husband/business partner Ray and I threw all the tools we might need on to a table.
We gathered books with pages already marked for reference along with worksheets from courses I’ve taken and online sites — both free, and membership.
We additionally stacked all the scraps of paper where where one of us madly scribbled ideas while the other was driving.
So how do you start to gather and organize these ideas that may have been thought of last week, or even, last year?
You begin by organizing your ideas.
This will keep you from losing the ones that are worth pursuing and tossing the ones that no longer make sense (Gee parking a pastry truck in my driveway seemed like such a great idea at 4 in the morning…).
Organizing your dream ideas gives you a sense of clarity and purpose, and helps you feel like you are taking real steps towards working on one of your great ideas.
Next get three big baskets, or three trays, or three boxes that you can label: “Can Do Right Now” (for ideas that can be accomplished quickly, like buying a domain name, or composing an email); “Needs More Work” (for ideas that are big that requite further decisions on how you would possibly implement them, like moving to Italy.); and “Schedule It Now” (for those ideas that can be scheduled, like an appointment with a nutritionist to kick-start your weight loss dream, or as with the case of my husband, booking a room for a photography class.).
The human mind wants to continually jump to finding “a solution.” There will come a time to dig into the nitty-gritty of your big dream ideas, but at this stage when you are simply trying to define them, solution-oriented thinking tends to get in the way.
It’s better to break your dream ideas down into organizational piles in the beginning.
Each Sunday my husband and I have made a commitment to looking at our dreams by going through our organizational piles to see what we can work on next.
Famous life coach Jack Canfield describes this method as “Chunking It Down” and we are using Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles chapter – “Chunk It Down” as a model for planning. You can grab this chapter for yourself to use for your dream planning too.
To those who are also buried in piles of dream ideas, enjoy the fact that you have such a creative mind! Â Just think, the hard fun work hasn’t even started yet and who knows, maybe one of your ideas will make you a million dollars.
Enjoy your dream planning this week … be sure to make a mess!
Heather
Heather Montgomery is a fitness writer, triathlete, and blogger who is devoted to sharing what she has learned about becoming a triathlete after age 40. She uses her Metabolic Training Certification to help other women struggling to get fit in mid-life. She lives and trains in Santa Rosa, California, the new home of the Ironman triathlon. You can find her biking the Sonoma County wine trails.
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