Visualising – How to keep your goals in focus.

Almost everyone will agree that to achieve something big, you need to set a goal.

You need to have a vision of what you want in your mind so that you can work towards it. You need to make your goal detailed, and you need to hold that vision persistently in your head.

But what if we don’t even know what our goals are, let alone describe them in detail?

And once you have set a goal, how do you hold that vision in your mind every day with so many day to day distractions around you?

Well, here is the method that I use every day to achieve my goals and hold that vision.
Every day, I write down 3 gratitude points, and write about “My Perfect Life”.

Here is an excerpt from May earlier this year.

My Perfect Life.

Gratitude

22/05/07

1. I have had a really good day, attitude wise. I have felt really good all day and I feel like I have a really positive attitude. I am really happy about this, it is so much better to have a good, positive attitude than a negative one. It’s such a better state of mind to be in.
2. I love a winter’s day. Today has been showers on and off with a biting coldness to the air. The change of seasons makes me feel alive.
3. I completed all of my tasks today on my list. What a great thing to happen. This will certainly be happening a lot more from now on. In fact, all the time.

Lifestyle, The Freedom I have, The time I have

22/05/07

This is what I have dreamt about for a long time but always thought not possible in the past.

Time for me has been one of the biggest issues in my life, especially in the last 5 years. In the past I never seem to have had enough time. Tasks were not being done, I felt like I was going nowhere.

What a turnaround. At last I only have to work (realistically) 2 days a week at the most, and they usually finish well before 5pm and often don’t start until well after 9pm. In fact, I don’t really have to work at all for money if I didn’t really want to, and that is probably what I will do in the near future. Maybe just a bit of share trading or looking for another investment property.

But this wonderful new amount of extra time that has been freed up because of the freedom of not having to work has given me so much freedom to be able to start doing the things that I really wanted to do. Being involved in the local tree planting group, spending a lot of the time in the veggie garden. You should see the veggies!! Virtually all of the fresh produce that we eat, including fruit, veggies, nuts, coffee, honey, eggs, meat, even the flowers that we put in a vase on the table, comes from our property. Only occasionally do we swap produce with other neighbours or the guy from the local organic shop for stuff that is out of season, or can’t be grown in our area such as mangoes. All of this wonderful extra time that has been freed up from working in the past has given me the time to develop this amazing, rich, bountiful, vibrant garden.

Sounds good doesn’t it? This is exactly the picture that I have held in my mind since May and it has been a very easy vision to maintain.

But before I discovered this method of holding my vision, I was struggling.

When I first learnt about visualising to achieve goals, I would set myself down in a quiet spot every morning, my biggest goals written down neatly in front of me and go through them one by one in my head, seeing myself already in possession of these goals.
This worked for quite a while, but soon it started to dwindle. After a while my mind would begin to wander during these peaceful morning sessions, and I started to have trouble concentrating and focusing on the task – to visualise my goals.
And the truth that I was losing concentration made it even harder because I was also losing my passion and enthusiasm for my goals.

I needed another way to stay on track.

And then my partner came up with a fantastic idea, and we created “My Perfect Life”.
It’s a bit like me being the author of my own book of life – My…Perfect Life.
It has helped me to stay so focused and excited about my goals and for me it is a really wonderful way to help me visualise.

It can also be of great help for those who aren’t’ really sure what their goals should be in the first place.

Here’s how to create your “Perfect Life”.

Spend 15 minutes a day doing this – no more, but do it every day. The trick is to push yourself for at least 30 days, and then it will become a habit.
You can type your daily entries in a word doc but you could also use a nice exercise book.
I usually put on some good music to get me in the mood. (Music is one of my passions that really inspires me and gets me into a visualising mood).

The first thing to do is to get into an “attitude of gratitude”. Simply write down 3 things that you are grateful for on the day.
They could be as simple as “I just love my beautiful daughter, she is so cute”, or “Gee I’m glad my football team won this weekend, what a team!”, or even about the weather or the simple fact that you have a roof over your head.

The next task is to focus on the goals that you have set for yourself. If you don’t have any goals, just work out some broad topics.

My topics are:

• Lifestyle, The Freedom I have, The time I have, Doing the things I love.
• My partner, my family, The people in my life
• My soul, my journey, my growth, my state of mind. I am happy.
• The money I have
• Holidays, The big adventure next year
• My health, my body
• My house, my garden, my surroundings, this is where I live.

It’s easiest to choose one topic per night, rather than tackling all of them at once, and just ‘go for it’.
Put yourself totally into the place that you are writing about, see yourself there, enjoying whatever you have in your mind. Describe the colours, the smells, your feelings, describe everything in detail. Make it in the present tense – be in that place, now. Be really descriptive.

Don’t hold back either, this is your “Dream Life”, you can write about whatever it is you desire, there should not be any limitations.

One of the reasons I think that this method of goal setting and visualising works so well is that the act of writing it down seems to make it much more concrete. It becomes a physical description of what you want, rather than just a fleeting thought through your mind. You can read back over it too which is a fun thing to do, and again, this brings you to the place that you really want to be when you read it again.

You’ll find that after a while you start to get into the real ‘nitty gritty’. Once you’ve been doing this for a month or so you will have gone through all the topics several times so you start to describe things in real details.

It really is a wonderful exercise and after a while you will start to see things really clearly.

After all, you have been writing about “Your Dream Life”, so plainly, these are what your goals should be.

Coming up next – What I have achieved using this method.