You’re back at work and the last of the festivities are over.
If you’re feeling a bit queasy, it’s not from too much egg nog.
After all the merrymaking, coming back to work can be a bit stressful. It’s just so disappointing to realize you’re back to the same old grind. The truth is you’re fed up with it, right?
But what would things look like if you felt truly passionate about your life?
How would you feel if you could live that way?
What if the exciting and inspiring things you hear about and feel envious of were things you were doing in your life instead?
If you’re just sick of work and a life that feels boring and laid out on someone else’s terms, I’ve got some help for you.
I’ve just launched my e-course The 9 Day Passion Project. It will help you get clear on your goals and start living a passionate, meaningful life on your terms, not someone else’s.
It’s just too depressing to let another year or another day to slip by living a life you don’t feel inspired by.
There are people around you doing inspiring things. Things you wish you could be doing. They each started by imagining a goal for themselves and then working toward it.
The 9 Day Passion Project helps you do just that. But you don’t have to do it alone.
Today I’m giving you an exercise from my 9 Day Passion Project e-course. I want you to see that this course can help you. This particular exercise is designed to help you get clear on your goals, and in particular to distinguish your goals from your fantasies, which might sound easy, but the truth is we go in circles all the time because we don’t know what we’re really working toward.
Here’s just one of the exercises that will help you get really clear on what you want in your life.
Dreams vs. Goals
Do you ever shut yourself down from dreaming because you immediately think: “I could never do that!”?
Well, maybe you could and maybe you couldn’t.
But the point is, if you don’t allow yourself to dream you can’t really even imagine an amazing future for yourself, much less create one.
One of the things that make it hard to just let go and dream is when your inner “planner” is on overdrive. It looks something like this:
Dreaming self: Ah, look at that mansion on the beach.
I wonder what it would be like to live in it?
I would wake up to the ocean every morning. . . and my kitchen is stunning! Who is that? Oh, it’s the cook! And there’s my maid!
First, I’m going to decorate the house. Maybe I’ll get some help from one of those guys on a design show. . .
Planning self: Mansion on the beach!
Imagine the mortgage payments! I would need four jobs.
And the cleaning! It needs a full time staff. I’d probably need six jobs!
And I can’t even think about how much it would cost to decorate a place like that! How would I even do it? I’d have to get some help from someone. . . where do you even find someone good to do that?
You see, the planning self is on overdrive coming up with problems, solutions, and getting frustrated at how impossible it all is before it’s even possible.
Does this sound familiar?
If so, it may help you to realize that you get to decide which dreams are forever destined to remain a fantasy, and which you will invest the blood, sweat and tears to achieve.
Dreaming something doesn’t make it real on its own. Dreaming plus work (with some synchronicity thrown in) is what it takes to get things done. So feel free to dream. It doesn’t cost anything.
1. Write down 50 (or more) dreams on a separate sheet of paper. These can be things you’d love to own, experience, do achieve, etc. in your lifetime. Examples might be:
a. A beach mansion
b. A 3 month European tour
c. To complete your family tree
d. To publish a novel
e. To have a lasting romantic relationship
f. To meet a specific celebrity.
Write as many of these as you can think of, but at least 50.
2. Which dreams ARE you willing to invest the blood, sweat and tears to achieve? Circle the dreams you are willing to invest in, and cross out the ones you are not.
The circled dreams are your goals. The crossed out dreams are fantasies.
Fantasies are fun. If they happen to you, that’s great but if not, it’s not crushing. With goals on the other hand, you have some skin in the game. You want to achieve them.
Write your goals on a fresh sheet of paper.
Is there a picture beginning to emerge when you understand more about your passions, your gift, the meaning they bring when they are combined, and now also your goals?