Take a look at your calendar. 

The year is halfway to being over.  Do you remember any New  Year’s resolutions you made?  Maybe that’s not something you practice, but finding exactly what you want to focus on is critical to making your dreams a reality.

Identify a clear direction and/or destination:  Specifying what you want and where you want your life to go, however vague this idea may be for you at the moment, automatically starts you on the journey to getting there. 

EXAMPLE: An example of this is laid out well in a recent post by a fabulous weightloss coach, Bridgette.  Whatever you are focusing on manifests in your liffe.  If all you think of all day is “I am not allowed to eat nachos” you are going to cave and binge on a massive platter of them.  If you are focusing on not getting fired, the fear and anxiety caused by dwelling on potentially losing your job will do very little for your current job performance… and a deteriorating performance will do little to secure your job. 

Instead, identify that you want to “eat five small meals daily, only when I feel hunger and stop when I start growing comfortably full” and you are more likely to follow healthy eating habits and thereby stroll past Jalisco’s Nachos without blinking.  Identify that you want to ”double your sales in the last half of the year” will set you at motion thinking of ways to find more clients and improve your sales pitches, making you a more valuable employee and last on the list of lay offs.  Just by altering your perspective, you’ve made yourself much more likely to avoid the things you would like to avoid.  What you focus on, you attract.  (Read Bridgette’s GREEN example for more color (ha, ha) on this.)

Here’s whatcha gotta do:  Get narrow about what you want for the next year to avoid pitfalls and create career success.

HOW TO DO IT: I read a great post by my friend Pam Slim  recommending we all identify what we want from the last half of the year by answering the same five questions she has used for her own game planning:

1. What are you going to focus on? (You cannot focus on everything and make progress)  Focus on success  and that is what you will find.  Get in touch with your essential self’s wants and put them on a piece of paper and leave it on your dashboard, bathroom mirror or fridge.  OR, be honest that you don’t even know what you want, and let THAT be the focus of the remainder of the year.  Think to yourself in each moment and when answering a question, what is it that I want or think? 
    
2. What are you going to improve? (You cannot grow at a sustained level without making some major system improvements. Sooner or later, you will start to lose ground in the areas that have been natural strengths)Pam suggests that she could use a boost in the systems she has in place to make her life and business run with less effort on her part.  Would you like to improve the quality of your life? If so, consider adding one healthy habit each month for the remainder of the year (asking to drop some responsibilities at work you hate in exchange for gaining ones that you enjoy, getting an extra hour of sleep a week, exercising once each weekend, eating a salad one weekday each week – something you will actually do and requires little effort). 
3. What are you going to grow? (You have tons of knowledge/material which just needs to be refined in order to deliver powerful benefits to the world)Do you want to grow a side business? In this economy where people are finally seeing that “security” gained by working for a large corporation is an illusion, having a Plan B that comes from your true passions turns any lay off into a blessing to go forth and pursue your dreams.  Do you want to grow in your expertise?  Taking an evening or weekend course this fall, or shadowing an expert a few days per month will give you tools you don’t even know you are missing to achieve your dreams. Do you want to grow in your knowledge of what you want to do with your life? Then be disciplined about reconnecting to yourself through the various means that resonate for you.
4. What are you going to leave behind?(If you are taking on new challenges, you will have to give some things up. And those should be the ineffective/self-sabatoging parts of your life or business that hold you back from growth) Be really honest with yourself when you look at your current life and identify the friendships, responsibilities or self-imposed duties that do nothing to advance your focus — or even result in self-sabotage.  If you want to thaw out your soul and make money doing something you love, maybe your weekly brunch with status quo-lovin’, change hatin’ friends should be minimized to a monthly meeting… or eliminated altogether. Do you even like coaching the middle school boys volleyball team for your sister’s kids? No? So quit! Give yourself permission to let some things go.
5. What are you going to learn? We stay fresh and creative by learning new things. What topic or field lights you up that you haven’t devoted time to learn about? 

 

I challenge you to write your answers to these questions and post it somewhere to catch your eye daily, such as your bathroom mirror, dashboard, refrigerator or office.  Each time you see it, you are reminded of your purpose for the next six months. When you identify what you want from the perspective of your essential self, your mid-year forecast is actually predicting your future.

Tell your own fortune this way and you’ve already done most of the work to making it come true.

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