Getting clear on your goals is one of the most critical aspect of your business success.
But for many women in business, goals are ever-shifting.
Women often juggle their business, extended family, home projects and everything in between.
Figuring out what your priorities are, where you are going, and when you want to get there can be a full-time job in itself.
If you don’t know what your goals are, you can meander and lose months. You don’t know what to focus on, and so you flit from one bright shiny object to another. You never quite finish anything. Or if you don’t, you don’t capitalise and build on this success. You’re off onto another project.
One of the most dangerous (and ever so seductive places) is to think you can work on several excellent complex projects simultaneously, and see them all be successful.
(In some rare cases, having multiple areas of focus can work, but only when you delegate most of the actual doing work to your team. If you are a solo-business, acting as head of prep, chef, front of house and also chief bottle washer, it’s so very difficult to win at everything.)
To Decide
There’s a really nice clue to how to solve this in the word “to decide”. It comes (via a stopover in French) from the Latin word “de-caedere”.
“De” means “off”, and “caedere” means “cut off”.
So “to decide” means “to cut off”.
It’s a lovely way of thinking about deciding about your goals and your options. To decide and move forward means to cut off other options. Perhaps you don’t need to cut off every single other option, but enough to feel that life is streamlined and simplified. For example, you might put the goals in a sequence, so you don’t feel that you have to do everything at once.
The Upside of Having Clear Goals
Once you are clear and congruent with your goals, you will feel lighter and able to move forward more easily.
As we come towards the end of 2019, using the pause at the end of the year is a good time to review the year and decide what you want out of 2020.
I’d love to see you clarify your goals, feel streamlined in your approach, and move forward with confidence and purpose.
How to Decide Your Goals
Next week I’ll talk more about how to set useful goals, but until then… The right attitude to one of interrogative curiosity about your true future desires. Ask yourself who you are as a person, and who you want to become. Even if there is a gap, there is always a way to close the gap.
Journal. Sit quietly. And then talk to your coach.
This is one time where it’s good to have an unbiased sounding board. Friends and family often want you to stay just the same.