The best way to start any new journey is to plan. We’ve all started something new and just wrote down our goal and ran with it. Sometimes that does work, but other times it requires a little bit more planning. Planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve a desired goal. It involves creativity, maintenance, hard work, and skills! Today I wanted to give you all some steps to use in the beginning of your process so that your outcome is exactly where you want to be.

After you have decided where you’re going to start, write out a vision. Where do you see yourself, what is your timeline, and what do you plan to accomplish? Your vision should have many details about what your end goal will be like. Once you see your vision on paper, you should feel fulfilled and start using phrases such as “I want” and “I will.”

Next, you should begin to self motivate. Have you ever heard of affirmations? Affirmations refer to a new thought that help primarily practice positive thinking and self-empowerment. It’s fostering a new belief that a positive mental attitude supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything! In this step, you have to think a lot about the why. Asking yourself why it is important in your life right now: why is it important that you help others and why is it important for you to accomplish this goal? 

You can always ask yourself why, but then you need to become more specific like finding out how. What can you do and what actions can be taken for you to achieve the why. This will help you with your goals, any more specific guidelines, and cover any bases that you forgot about. 

Now that you have how you can complete your why, it is now time to make an action plan. Many times your specifications are still too broad to be able to start on anything right away. Now is the time for the planning session and making plans to carry out the plans. You can put them in steps numerically! Remember that you can go as many layers deep as necessary for clarity of action that you need. This plan is designed for you to understand. While in the process of this plan, make sure you set a deadline. If you don’t set a deadline you could wander off for days, weeks, months, or even years. Make sure you post the plan where you can see it daily to constantly remind yourself of what needs to be done.

The last step is to monitor your progress. You could check off days on the calendar, your family and friends are great because they can help keep you accountable and once everything is done, you can reward yourself! You finally did it, you have your plan!