The nights are drawing out
And we move towards the start of the next year, I am looking towards Spring and how that will bring so much more new growth and longer days. The winter will be long behind us and we will be benefitting from the blossom and some warmer weather.
I'm also looking at how I can improve myself over the next twelve months and thinking about how I can best impact my year to bring the maximum prosperity and benefit to my friends and clients alike. The start of the new year brings much positivity for most but not for all. For some it's simply another year to worry about, getting more clients, improving profitability and making sure we can get by.
I am in no way immune to such thoughts and indeed as a sufferer of SAD I find being positive in these long dark days and nights quite a challenge. The are ways that I bring a little lightness into my thoughts, literally with a daylight lamp which sees off the SAD pretty much. That allows me to concentrate on what I'm doing and drive my own business forward. This feeling of new impetus is essential to me because I want to progress and improve as a coach and also through my services.I also need to develop, to bring new ideas and concepts to my coaching which set me apart from everyone else. These challenges are not easy when you consider how much time we have to do all these tasks.
I decided then to write this blog and share my thoughts of how I intend to bring some prosperity to my life and business in the new year. None of these will be earth shattering, of that you can be assured and yet they may just trigger something in how you see your new year:
1. Positivity of thought first and foremost is the most important element for me in my new year planning. We can all be dogged with doubt about we are engaged in; these doubts can often spill over and become worries which in turn makes us consider whether we have done the right thing. The key to positivity is,
2. Confidence in what we are doing, our abilities to do it and to bring the end products that are desired. Confidence will vary with all of us through time and for me, I need to be confident from the 1st of January that I can succeed. To be confident I need to,
3. Plan what it is I'm going to be doing from the start of the year through the year to the end, which must include my goals to succeed, these goals need to be
4. Recorded and committed to in a way which makes me move towards them, step by step. To do that I need to understand exactly what actions are needed and by when, to do that I need to
5. Coach myself to understand the goals that I need and that I am setting; once I gave them I will get myself a coach to help me along the path that I have chosen. If they don't go to plan then I need a
6. Contingency plan which will allow me to continue towards my goal with the minimum of disruption. The main thing to remember here is that there is no plan which can survive contact with reality, because a plan is simply a series of estimations. Reality very rarely matches our estimations, if that were the case everything would be perfect.
7. Iteration is the key to all of this, plan, do, check and act through each goal, testing and adjusting as you go.
The whole process is simple sounding and yet will take commitment, energy and effort. This start to my year is essential to enable me to continue in business. That alone is not sufficient to keep me focused after all I can just go back to work; dreams however are enough to keep me focused as is the desire to do something which I truly enjoy.
A new year, a new start and a new set of dreams, I can't wait to get started and I hope you can't either.