It’s that time of year again: The beginning of the school year. Even if you don’t have kids in school or are not a University student yourself, or work in the academic field, September is always the mark of a new year. Fall is in the air and day trips to the beach are numbered.
How does this time of the year make you feel? Is it tough to get back into a routine? Do you find yourself disorganized and maybe a little harried? Are you putting your goals and dreams aside because you don’t have the time to focus?
The beginning of September is a lot busier than the summer, and often requires a lot of our energy that needs to be focused in areas where we haven’t focused it on in a while. Does this mean you need to put your goals and dreams on hold? The longer we spend away from our goals and dreams, the more difficult it becomes to get back to them.
What’s stopping you from moving forward on your goals and dreams? Is it the feeling that you don’t have energy? Do you feel like you don’t have the time? Did you take the summer off from it thinking you would get back to it in September and now you think that because you’ve taken so much time away from it, there is no point in going back to it?
All of these thoughts are from what I like to call our Inner Saboteur., that voice of self-doubt that doees whatever it can to keep you from moving forward on your dreams and goals.
What if you were to take a few minutes a day for yourself and your dreams? What if you work on something related to your goals, maybe a side project that will help you achieve the end product?
What do I mean by a side project? As a writer, I might not have the energy or time to spend a few hours a day on writing, but I can do some research on the subject matter, or agents and editors. As a woodworker, maybe I don’t have the time it takes right now to make my masterpiece, but I can research material I might want to use and discover new techniques to the trade. If the goal is to take an exotic trip somewhere, maybe I could start with looking up locations, deciding what activities most interest me and which locations best suit those. Maybe I could set the budget for such a trip and start figuring out how I’m going to pay for it.
There are always small steps that can be taken even when your energy is at an all time low. If you take these small steps, you will feel your energy for that project grow and be ready to go in full when you do settle into your routine.
So what’s stopping you from moving forward on your goals? What step will you take to move forward?
