Wow! It has been awhile! I took a few weeks off from my blog in order to get married, take my honeymoon, and get back to normal life. Well, normal-ish. I accomplished having the wedding of my dreams. It was beautiful, modern, whimsical, and FUN. Now, I am left feeling satisfied and a little bit lost. The wedding took over way more brain cells and creativity than I had thought, and I am suddenly left with energy, brain space, and no current projects. I have all of this momentum and nowhere to put it, which can be terrifying if you live with me. Every few days I come up with a new thing that I could do, like become an interior designer and/or a badass drummer and/or a clay sculptor. The possibilities are endless. And GOOD GOD THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS. That can feel super overwhelming for someone like me. I need structure and direction in order to move forward. Otherwise, I will keep spinning in the world of possibilities.
It is fortuitous that at this time I am also finally reading
the book, Switch: How to create change
when change is hard by Chip and Dan Heath. This has been on my bookshelf
for at least three years, and I am busting through it. They lay out an
easily-grasped, well-researched, and helpful framework for creating change. The
Heaths advocate for creating goals that evoke emotion and are clear, measurable,
and memorable. They state that you need to appeal to both the emotional and
rational sides of the brain in order to create motivating goals. The Heaths
then go on to state that the path to the goals must be specific, clear (again),
and well-mapped. They also talk about shaping your environment for change and
expanding helpful change habits. (SO GOOD!)
Frankly, I am stuck on step number one, which is to create
goals that are emotional and rational. For right now, I have four goals in mind
that I keep returning to in the midst of my possibility wave.
- Write an erotic novel by March 2015
- Create a successful book-art accessory business
- Build the structure for my dating therapy practice
- Pass the clinical social work exam by October 2015
Are these goals all emotional, rational, clear and measurable? Not
yet! But they will be. And then I can start mapping out how I will accomplish
them. In the meantime, I have a lot to learn from Switch and other entrepreneurial literature. Then I have to
actually do the things that I learn. Damn creating structure from the ground up
is hard! And exciting! And overwhelming! And cool! And complicated!
Do any of you have experience with accomplishing BIG goals?
How did you work through it?
- L, current learner and future goal accomplisher
