Managing your Evolving Achievements Binder

Have you captured all your goals, dreams and ideas for your future on paper? Are they organized in a meaningful way to you? If you haven’t heard of this idea, you’ll want to read my blog post on the Evolving Achievements Binder. Hopefully your many goals have been captured on paper, and you’ve been inspired to take further action.

After you’ve put together your Evolving Achievements Binder, you’ll still need to manage it. There are a few good reasons why you should regularly review, dust off, clean, and re-organize your evolving achievements binder (aside from the fact that it’s fun to do!).

When I was reviewing my binder just the other day, I came across my health and fitness section, and noticed that it had literally exploded in size. I had inserted so many different resources, and pictures of all the new weight lifting exercises that I had been doing at the gym. I actually ended up taking out the majority of that section, and I started a whole new resource binder for my health and fitness. Now, my binder is much more organized again. I can easily go through and read what my future goals are with respect to my health and wellness, without getting distracted. I also realized, that I’ve probably accumulated more than enough information to write a small e-book on this topic! Perhaps I’ll have to start another blog just on that topic alone.

When I was reviewing all my goals, it was interesting because I noticed myself saying out aloud, “Oh I’ve already done that”, and “I just started doing that!”. Unless I reviewed my goals, I wouldn’t have realized all that I had accomplished. Also, I had never made those goals my key priority, and had never consciously set aside time to work on those goals. I think that demonstrates the power of simply writing goals down. Somehow, the act of writing down our goals must communicate with our subconscious mind, and as a result we automatically begin taking action, and attracting those people and resources into our lives to make things happen.

I also realized the importance of translating all our goals into habits. Daily, twice a week, weekly or even biweekly habits. If you can’t make something a habit, then rarely would those goals ever turn into reality. The areas where I felt I was having the most progress, e.g., career and fitness goals, were the areas where I had done significant planning around how to turn some of my action steps into habits. For instance, I set the goal of spending two times per week writing in my book, and in doing so, I almost doubled the length of it.

Each time you read about your dreams, you’ll notice that you will read with a new sense of clarity, because your ideas have had more time to crystallize. Or, you might have had more time to think about developing actual plans to take further actions steps.

I’ve also discovered a few little ‘goals’ and ideas that aren’t even important to me at all. At first, when I jotted them down, they seemed like good ideas, but in retrospect I’ve learned that they are meaningless. So you’ll also benefit as you discover your authentic self, and more of your values. Likewise, I also read over a few goal categories that made me feel really scattered and overwhelmed. Clearly, those goals need further development. So, I’ve planned a time to go back and prioritize or rank all of those goals. Over time our big ideas evolve into something more serious. What we value will come into the forefront of our mind, and that which isn’t so important to us, will fade out a bit.

Finally, regularly reviewing your Evolving Achievements Binder will constantly remind you of what is most important, and it will help you stay on track. Just think about the people that don’t write their goals down at all. If you seriously review your goals each month, you are going to speed up the entire learning process around who you are, what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to do it. More importantly, you’re going to be unstoppable because you’ll constantly find yourself in action!

Cheers,
Allison

Invest in Yourself!

“Invest in myself? Are you kidding me? I have no time!” I know I’ve said this many times over and over to myself. Everyone is busy taking care of multiple responsibilities, all at once. Sometimes it feels like we are running on a wheel or treadmill of life, constantly going, with no time to invest in ourselves.

And now, here I am telling you that you should invest in yourself. I had an interesting, little epiphany the other day, when I was feeling frustrated about the lack of time that I had, and how I had used that as an excuse to continue writing my new book, Evolving Achievements.

Then, what popped into my head, was the 10% rule on investments. The golden rule is to always pay yourself first. Pay yourself first, pay yourself first….the message never grows old. And the rule works. Almost everyone is able to save some amount of their pay cheque, even if only a few bucks. So, I thought, could we not apply this rule to our personal goals, even if we are really busy women?

I don’t think we really have a choice. I once read in one of Bob Proctor’s books, that time is never the real barrier behind achieving our goals. The real issue is our failure to prioritize our time effectively.

So, how can we all use our time more effectively? A mentor recently reminded me that the most successful people became that way because they learned to break down their large goals into small tasks that could be done on a daily or weekly basis, in such a way that those tasks never interfered with the rest of their life.

I can remember several years ago, I was in Edmonton at one of Dan Poynter’s book publishing seminars. There was a lady in her early 40’s who was so determined to complete her book that she woke up at 4am every morning before work, and wrote until 5:30am. Then, she went to the gym to exercise before heading off to work. I remember asking her why she didn’t pursue her workouts in the evening (assuming 4am was too early), and she said that early in the morning was the only ‘quiet’ time where she could fully concentrate. How’s that for self-discipline, and more importantly, finding a habit

So, how will you find time in your schedule to work on the things that are most important to you? Will it be early in the morning? Do you have time between running errands, or while waiting to meet a friend or colleague? What could you do on your lunch break? One thing that has worked wonders for me, is simply making to-do lists all the time, and thinking or planning ahead about what I will do in my next block of time, whenever that might be. A lot of time gets wasted simply thinking about what to do next.

Another realization that I continually experience over and over again, is how it is a necessity to invest in yourself first. I can remember one weekend, having a major work assignment to prepare for, having two social obligations to attend, an entire house to clean, and a few appointments that I couldn’t miss. I was feeling a bit stressed out, and then I reminded myself about the importance of taking care of myself. So, each morning, I was up an hour earlier to workout, and then, I came home and gave myself time to write – something that gives me absolute joy, and fills up my ‘buckets’. That joy, that energy and vitality carried itself all the way through to all the other tasks that I needed to finish that weekend.

The point then, is to think of investing in yourself, as just that, – an investment. Don’t look at the achievement of your personal goals and habits as a chore, because those activities are what fill you up with expansive, positive energy, and drive you to maintain an excellent attitude and vigour in everything that you do.

Here’s an excellent exercise that I’d suggest. Pull out a sheet of loose leaf paper. Make a list of all the small time blocks that could possibly be used to work on some of your important goals. Identify some times when you could truly get yourself into the habit of working on the pursuits that are most meaningful to you. This will ensure that your achievements continue to evolve as opposed to desolve.

Cheers to your success! that works.