Author: Muriel McClymont

When we set goals and make plans, we have to find the motivation to transform these into reality. There’s lots of advice out there on how to do this, indeed, we’ve made many suggestions within previous blog posts, or in the online resources section of this website.

One very powerful tool though is the Vision Board. In this blog we’ll discuss what this is and how it works.

What is it?

A vision board can be a notice board, allocated area of wall or a large piece of paper - it doesn’t really matter what you use. What’s important is what you put on it. Vision boards are usually a collection of images, words and sometimes materials that invoke strong positive feelings in you.

For maximum impact, it’s good to place your vision board somewhere prominent where you’ll see it every day. By looking at it regularly, you’ll be reminded what you’re working towards. The feelings it will produce in you will help you stay motivated to achieve the goal or goals encapsulated by this collage of images that are all very personal to you.

Being made up of images, the overall picture that is created becomes more memorable, so you can see it in your mind’s eye even when you’re not actually standing in front of it. Conjuring up a mental image of a list of goals and sub-goals and actions in this way would be trickier to do for most people.

It’s not dissimilar to the mood/style boards used to help designer’s clients get a more tangible sense of the ideas being presented. The big difference is, it’s more personal nature and the powerful motivational impact it can have.

How does it work?

To understand how it works we have to consider how our brains and motivation works. We are complex beings, and I’m not going to be able to tackle that vast topic in this short blog. However, I am going to pick out one key element that plays a huge part in the effectiveness of vision boards, which is the way our conscious and unconscious minds work.

Milton Erickson, a therapist whose hypnotherapy practices formed the basis of Ericksonian Hypnosis, used the analogy of the conscious mind and unconscious mind as a horse and rider with the rider being the conscious mind, and the horse our unconscious.

When the relationship is working well, the rider makes the decisions about where to go, and at what speed, and the horse works out how best to make that happen. Anyone who has worked with horses, or any animals, knows that it takes a lot of time and close work to form a successful partnership like this.

However, we’ve all seen what happens when this relationship breaks down, and the horse decides to do it’s own thing. There is nothing any rider can do to actually make three quarters of a ton of horse do anything! The relationship only works when the horse was voluntarily cooperating.

In the same way, our conscious mind can make great plans, but if no attempt is made to persuade the unconscious mind that these plans have merit, then just like the horse, it will keep going on the path it knows, rather than listen to its rider’s new instructions. No amount of positive intentions set by the conscious mind is ever going to prise an unconvinced unconscious mind out of its ‘stable’!

What the vision board does, is work directly with the subconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the less verbal partner of the two - it’s far more influenced by images and feelings than reasoned argument. Making big powerful picture worlds on a board, with deeply felt emotional attachments, makes it very compelling to your unconscious. It lets you set goals in a subtle way, gently and persistently shifting the focus for your unconscious mind onto what great things are possible for you.

Then, when you are going about your daily life, your unconscious mind will spot that advert or opportunity that can take you one step down the path towards your goal, and draws your conscious minds attention to it. Before you know it, something small has changed, which will motivate both of your minds to work together in this direction, just like that successful horse and rider partnership.

How do you create a vision board?

To create your own vision board, first choose a topic or goal that you care about. Then start to collect images that are relevant to this topic and which strongly draw you to them. It’s important not to use images, words or objects that are just so-so, the impact of the board is stronger when you have a big emotional response to each and every component.

Once you have enough images, it’s time to gather your materials. Decide whether you are going to use a pin board or paper. A pin board can be good because it’s easy to update if you find a new image, or want to replace an old one. Saying that, you can easily glue a new image over the top of an old one on paper, so it’s really up to you. If you prefer to use a techie method, Pinterest is a great way to do an electronic version, which you can print out, or use as a screen saver, keeping it in your sights regularly.

Make it fun to make, do it with friends, or as a relaxing ‘me time’ event. The more fun associations you have with it, the more positive impacts it will have on you long term.

Then just get creative. Make it look as good as you can. Add additional decoration, or key words, anything that makes the message it holds for you more exciting, compelling and attractive.

Once you’ve made it, put it up somewhere you will see it regularly and see what happens!

Do’s and Don’ts

There are some spectacular strategies out there for making setbacks worse, and if we are honest, most of us have indulged in some of them on occasion. In this blog, I’ve identified the most common negative approaches, and below each one offer an antidote. So if you recognise an unhelpful strategy that you are guilty of using, try the alternative and see if it helps!

1. Don’t - catastrophise

Some of us have a tendency to make things worse in our heads, e.g., when something bad happens, we imagine all the negative outcomes or knock on effects that could possibly happen because of this event. Then, we take all these imagined scenarios, and conjure up negative outcomes and knock on impacts that could possibly result if these things were to happen. Before we know it, we are blubbering idiots, curled up in the foetal position, completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the chain of events that haven’t even happened! Ever done this, be honest now?

Do – keep it in perspective

To avoid making a molehill into an imaginary mountain, the alternative is to see what has happened in the context of everything else that is going on in your life, and recognise that it is just a passing disappointment. Career disappointments don’t remove your good health, or strip you of your family or friends, or take your hobbies away.

While obviously having no money has a knock on impact, it’s important to stay motivated so you can move onto the next opportunity rather than make this one even worse than it needs to be.

It’s important to remember that no setback, however bad, ever defines who you are, there is always so much more to you than any one setback in any one area of your life!

2. Don’t - focus only on the problem

There is no better way to render you completely free from any motivation to improve a situation than to put all of your effort, time and attention on what went wrong. Imagine rushing to the airport and finding you missed your flight. To implement this strategy, you should find a seat, pull out all the paperwork, and check all the times to see what went wrong. This is a good time to dig out your diary, and wonder where you didn’t allow enough time, perhaps the taxi, bus or tube took longer than you expected. Maybe there was a hold up at the check in desk. You could even take a little time to consider that this wouldn’t have happened if you had taken a later flight, or travelled on a different day. With this approach, it’s worth considering whether you missed this plane because you are ‘unlucky’. You could go the whole hog and engage your inner victim, start to feel upset and wonder, “Why me!”

You get my drift here, nothing is actually changing, and no steps are being taken to sort the problem out.

Do - ask what can you do about it

If we use the example above of the missed flight, what’s the alternative strategy? Looking at the facts of the situation, you are not on the plane you planned to be, and it’s likely you still need to get to your destination.

So ask yourself, what can you do about it? The answer to this question depends on what you were travelling for and what your personal resources are. You may be in a position to shrug it off and book another flight, if not, it’s always worth throwing yourself at the mercy of the airline. There may be some flexibility, especially if your delay was out of your control. You can explore other modes of transport, cancel your plans, or come up with some alternative creative solutions to the problem.

If you have to give up and go home, it still isn’t worth dwelling on how it happened, other than to make sure you learn any lessons that would prevent it occurring again in the future. Then find a constructive use for the extra time you have just gained to make the best of what started to look like a bad day!

3. Don’t – use the setback to taint the good stuff

An excellent strategy for feeling bad about a setback is to use it to redefine all the good things in your life through a self-crafted filter of negativity. By which I mean, say for example you didn’t get a job you really wanted. Take this fact of not winning that work and add some meaning about how it reflects on you as a human being. Things like being useless, worthless and clueless are all good for this approach.

Now add some wild speculation along the lines of, only these employers had the insight to recognise the deep flaws in you and your abilities. People who have loved your work in the past must be deluded and quite frankly not very good at their jobs. All the friends and family who have supported you in your endeavours must have been having you on.

You can see where this is going. If you really put your back into this one, you can in a very short time come to see your entire existence as a sham with every positive experience a chance occurrence, akin to winning the lottery!

Not a good place to go… ever!

Do – use past positive experiences to recognise this as a temporary setback

This is the exact opposite of the negative strategy above. This involves using the same imaginative abilities, only reversing the focus and direction. By which I mean, instead of holding up this current setback as the defining example, or gold standard, by which you measure everything else, take a few random examples of great memories of past experiences where you have been successful in this area, and compare this current experience with each one. As you do this, you will remind yourself how insignificant this current setback really is, and you will get back in touch with some of the things you really loved doing.

If you find this hard to do, especially when you are feeling a bit bruised, it’s a really good idea to have an achievement file, with a list of your proudest achievements, tucked away somewhere, so you can pull it out in emergencies like this, and browse through the all the good stuff. It’s a brilliant way to get your head back into positive shape for taking the next step.

4. Don’t – believe that this one setback will shape your whole life

Have you ever had that feeling, when something bad has happened, that it’s going to impact every aspect of your life? Occasionally this does indeed happen, but it is by far the exception not the rule. To use this strategy to feel really bad though, it’s important to forget this. To work this one to the hilt, you must forget that you have any other options to try. Erase from your memory any other situations where you have felt like this and the situation has turned out fine. Now just sit and imagine how your whole life, career, social structure and finances are about to crumble around you. See the task of rebuilding a new life from scratch, and take a little time to let this completely overwhelm you.

Dark stuff, eh?

Do – remember that ‘pivotal moments’ are rarely single events!

We all love to identify that point in our life where we changed direction, or found success, or made an important decision. If we are honest though, these key events are generally convenient hooks that make our story telling more exciting. The reality is that the ‘lucky break’, came after years of preparation, training and being in the right place at the right time, before the ‘magic moment’ actually took place.

When we make major life changes because we have been unhappy, the way we talk about coming to this momentous decision indicates how this isn’t really a snap decision, it comes after many frustrations, as in: “It was the straw that broke the camels back.”

So when something goes wrong, even in a big way, remember all those other times when you thought you had reached a brick wall and it turned out to be a minor blip, or even worked to your advantage.

Remember also that it’s very rare for one single event to change your life. If you think about your progress as being like a speeding train, it takes a lot to slow it down or stop it. Imagine setbacks as flies hitting the windscreen! Splat!

5. Don’t – use a setback as an excuse to trawl through bad memories

I have to say this used to be a speciality of mine. If I was embarrassed or had made a mistake, I was spectacularly talented at finding other similar examples from the past. I would take a careful inventory of them and maximise the impact by going right back and reliving each one, until I felt the embarrassment or shame of each one once more. If I really wanted to indulge myself, I would imagine an audience of disappointed and unhappy people looking at me, gently shaking their heads.

This is a really effective way to feel as bad as you can about a minor setback.

Do – ask what you can learn from the setback, or find the funny side

We don’t learn nearly half as much when things go well as we do when they don’t! So, instead of bedding down to feel as bad as you can about a setback, embrace it as a learning opportunity.

Always assume the mantle of feedback not failure. You can do something with feedback, failure is an emotional dead end. Once you have identified any lessons, if you still feel bad, look for the funny side. You’ve heard the saying: “One day I’ll look back at this and laugh.” Why wait?

In Conclusion

This has been a slightly tongue in cheek look at the do’s and don’ts of dealing with setbacks, and if a health warning is necessary, please do not try out any of the ‘don’t strategies detailed above, even in the spirit of scientific experiment. Do try out the antidotes though, until they become your habitual responses to setbacks, and use them as your setback fly swat.

Focus on the solution not the problem

I used to work with an ex para called John, who’s battle cry in a crisis was: “Let’s focus on the problem, people!” John was an exceptional man. He’d survived a broken back in the services, and was in constant pain. Yet he had forged a whole new, successful career, becoming operations director in a large facilities management company.

The funny thing was though that anyone actually focussing ‘on the problem’ only would have been promptly kicked out of his meeting! What he meant was, let’s focus on what we are going to do about it.

I loved attending meetings with John. He would cut wafflers off mid-sentence, and bring everyone back to what needed to be done, with a stern: “Focus, people!” When problems arose, John was always the man tasked to find the solutions.

Change your mindset

If you think about it, focussing on the problem gives you very limited information, a narrow perspective and no new options. If you talk to someone who is depressed or stuck with one particular problem, they often keep raking through the same issue or event, as if something will spontaneously change if they keep going over it all again and again. Most of us have experienced how this just doesn’t work. As Albert Einstein once said: “You can’t solve the problem using the same thinking that created it in the first place.”

You have to find ways to focus on what you can do. You need to step back and think about the other areas in your life where things are going well, find what is working. I know this is easier said than done, but whenever you feel stuck, ask yourself, are you focussing on the problem, or potential solutions and options?

Some people seem to naturally be able to find this positive perspective. I’ve just spent a lot of time with another amazing man, who is also my father. He recently had a medical crisis, and was told in very clear and certain terms that he was not going to survive. The prognosis was he had days to live.

Don’t dwell, take action

He immediately set his mind to the task of setting his affairs in order. Each day family would come and visit and he would give us all our specific instructions - which newspaper his death notice should be in, who should be personally notified, where all the important papers and documents were, and who should deal with them.

At the same time the family all came to see him, and there was much laughter and reminiscence. Much of the humour was dark and would not have been to everyone’s taste, but the room where he was supposed to be quietly expiring, took on a bit of a party atmosphere.

After a few days, when my father refused to get sicker, the doctors started allowing him to eat again, and restarted his medication. After 10 days, they pronounced that they were ‘confounded’, that he was a ‘magician’, and they moved him to rehab to start him on the long, and still ongoing, journey back to physical fitness.

As I sat down to write this blog, I was struck by the fact that at no time did my father focus on what had gone wrong. I’m sure he experienced huge internal turmoil, perhaps even despair, when he heard and digested the original pronouncement, but then he just accepted it and focussed solely on what he could do, and on what was within his control. He comes from that stoic, war generation that is awesome to witness.

For me, I realised what an amazing master-class I had been given in dealing with setbacks. I started to think about times in my own life where I‘ve overcome much smaller obstacles and realised that things had been resolved when I had focussed on what I could do, what I could change, and what I could control. When problems have remained problems for me, it has because I became stuck, focussing only on the problem, until I either moved on, or something or someone else managed to shake me out of it.

Striving to resolve setbacks is a natural drive, feeling helpless and stuck is a learned response. We are born programmed to focus on getting fed, learning to communicate and walk. No toddler sits on the ground focussing on how hard it is to walk, they just find the necessary carpet, table or toy they need, to pull themselves up on, and have another go.

A flower being overshadowed by a larger plant doesn’t turn it’s attention onto that plant, it keeps it’s photosynthesising sights firmly on the sun, and literally moves heaven and earth to get it back in view. In the world of plants, people like John and my dad are like bamboo, a plant known for it’s ability to blast through concrete in order to get back to the sun.

So next time you experience a setback, remember not to focus on what has happened, but rather look for what you can do about it and then just do it!

We covered what being assertive is and isn’t in the last blog, but how do we become more assertive if it doesn’t come naturally? Follow these five steps to help you take your assertiveness skills up a notch.

1. Work out what you want

There’s no point in learning to behave assertively, if you don’t actually know what it is you want; no point in arguing over a payment rate if you don’t know what is acceptable and nothing to be gained from getting your choice of restaurant agreed by a group if you don’t even know if the food is any good!

If you haven’t already done so, the first step to being assertive is to set yourself some clear goals and targets and work out how important they are to you, and what it will mean to you to achieve them. This is also where the motivation to go for what you want comes from.

Think about areas or situations in which you think you could be more assertive – times when you could have kicked yourself for not speaking or equally destructive, when you unnecessary lost your rag with someone and suffered (possibly quite rightly) as a results. Once you’ve identified some of these, make up your mind to substitute the passive/aggressive/passive-aggressive behaviour with more assertive tactics. This may take a bit of practise but keep trying until you experience better results both in what happens and how you feel about your new, self-respectful self.

2. Get into the right mind-set

It’s all very well sorting out what you want, but if you are running some programme in your head that says, going for what you want is ‘selfish’, or ‘not for the likes of you,’ this will get in the way.

Be honest with yourself and take some time to think about what the downside of getting your goals might be. Sometimes we worry we will lose our friends, or that it will change who we actually are. We may be worried this path will disappoint someone we really care about.

Only by being honest and getting our fears out in the open and admitting they are concerns, will you be able to address them rationally and emotionally, and put them to rest.

If you think getting what you want is selfish or somehow you’re undeserving, imagine being your own best friend listening to you saying that. What would your best friend say?

Understand it’s not personal, apart from when it is! Obviously everything we do is about relationship, but many of us assume that to stick up for ourselves professionally is hard to do and still be liked. I would argue that this is not true - being professionally assertive is likely to gain you respect. Respect is a fantastic foundation for being liked once you’ve got all the business negotiations out of the way.

Be confident in what you want and flexible about what may be possible. This is an incredibly powerful combination.

3. Take responsibility

Who’s driving the bus?

It’s unlikely that anyone is going to take you gently aside, tell you to grab a coffee and relax while they sort out all the problems in your life. So why do so many of us act as though this is a possibility, and stand back allowing others to take major decisions in many areas of our life.

Sticking up for yourself is not pushy, it’s simply recognising that at the end of the day you, and only you, will have to deal with the consequences of your actions and decisions.

Feel the power

None of us have control over everything that happens in our lives, but we are all in charge of how we react to it, and for the choices we make as a result.

Bad things happen to all of us at some time, we can’t make people employ us, or stop them from closing productions or publications. There are many events completely outwith our control, which happen to us all. However, we always have choices. The first choice we have to make is whether to feel like a victim and do nothing, or whether to say, OK, this has happened, what can I do right now to move myself forward?

When something bad happens, you can choose whether to make it a blip or major catastrophe. It may not be easy, but it’s possible. Basically, you’ve got that power! If you want a musical accompaniment to this sentiment, click this link and turn up the volume and enjoy a quick burst of “I’ve got the power” by Snap!

4. Behaving assertively

There are many ways we can learn to behave more assertively, we have highlighted some key ones below:

Two heads are better than one

Be clear about what you want and why and spend time understanding what others are trying to achieve. It may be that you can find common ground that will give you both enough of what you want - to make a compromise possible. Always approach things as a joint problem solver, not an adversary.

Use language that shows you are taking responsibility

Use ‘I’ language, as in, “I need…”, “I want…”, “ I feel….”.

When sentences start with “You,” you are not speaking from the position you know most about, and the other person may feel you are blaming, or shifting responsibility onto them. For example:

1. “I need to make enough money on this job to cover my living expenses.”

versus: “You need to offer me enough money for me to cover my living expenses.”

2. “I’m not sure I want to get involved in this project.”

versus: “You are trying to get me to commit to something I’m not sure about.”

3. “I’m torn because this is a great opportunity but the pay is lower than I expected.”

versus: “You know it’s a great job so you’re trying to pressurise me into accepting a low a pay rate.”

In some cases the differences can be quite subtle, but if you put yourself on the receiving end of these sentences, you will immediately feel how differently they come across.

Sticking with “I,” also makes it much harder to argue with. No-one can disagree with how you feel, or what you say you need or want, but if you tell other people what they need or want, or suggest they can control how you feel, then that can sound aggressive.

Don’t feel obliged to respond immediately

Take time out before responding to something if you feel too angry or upset to deal with it immediately. Being assertive doesn’t mean you don’t feel emotions, you just don’t allow them to drive the situation. It is always an option to say: ‘I’m not sure how I feel about this currently. I’ll get back to you later.’

5. Learn to say “no”

Being able to say no politely, especially when there is an element of obligation attached to a request, is the ‘Gold Standard’ in assertive land. Most of us have our Achilles heel, where we repeatedly end up doing things we don’t want to do, helping out when we don’t really have the time or resources to, or spending time at social events we’d rather give a miss.

Of course we all have to do things we don’t want to sometimes, but many of us really do struggle to quite reasonable say no, just because we have been asked directly to participate. Once you are a fully-fledged assertive ‘graduate’, you will be able to say no, without causing offence, or feeling bad about it.

Go on try it!

'Well, I don’t like to be pushy,” was the answer I got to a question the other day. I’ve never considered assertiveness as being ‘pushy’. I started to think about how I would describe it.

What is assertiveness?

Being assertive is the grown up place to be - it’s where you are able to stand up for yourself without trampling or bullying others. It’s about being flexible and creative in finding suitable alternatives, working with others to find compromises when what you want clashes with their needs, and being able to walk away and find new opportunities when compromise isn’t possible.

Being assertive is about being confident in who you are, seeing yourself as a willing contributor to the world and not a master or servant.

It’s also about having the confidence and choosing not to assert yourself in every situation - when you feel there is no point in doing so.

To be specific - being assertive is:

Taking responsibility for yourself and what you want to do and achieve. It’s about knowing that it’s up to you to express your needs and aspirations clearly and unambiguously. This doesn’t mean that anyone else then has to make that happen. It is still fully your responsibility to work out how you can move closer towards achieving your own goals.

Finding co-operative solutions in any situation. Assertive people don’t blame or make unreasonable demands on others. Also, they don’t put up and shut up and undertake a route they fundamentally disagree with. Instead they work with and around conflicting needs to find a suitable solution, or agree to take divergent paths, without having to give or receive personal slight or injury.

Standing up for yourself and what you want or need, while taking into consideration what other people are trying to achieve for themselves, and being prepared to negotiate and compromise where appropriate.

Managing your own reactions. While you may not have control over everything that happens in your life, you can control how you react to it, and the choices you make as a result. People may say: “They make me so angry,” but other people cannot ‘make’ you feel or do anything without your agreement or compliance. They may act in ways that you dislike and disagree with, but how you react is entirely up to you.

Respecting yourself and others, which means being confident that you and your needs matter while recognising that they might not be a priority for others.

Being aggressive:

• Is often about being right at all cost and often just for the sake of being right. Aggressive behavior is usually unbending or uncompromising. It’s about acting in such a way as to coerce or even force people to do what you want no matter how they feel about it and can easily slide into intimidation and bullying.
• is confrontational with little scope for debate or negotiation.
• can be manipulative.
• often indicates a loss of emotional control. When people are being aggressive, they often don’t moderate their emotions, losing their tempers without caring if it’s appropriate or damaging to others.

Being passive:

• Is about pleasing others – often by sacrificing one’s own wants and needs – sometimes even when you don’t agree with what you are doing.
• Is following others without expecting your needs or opinions to be considered.
• Is about lack of self-respect, and in some ways lack of respect or belief in others, thinking that they will somehow be unable to deal with or handle your opinions and preferences.

A subset of the two alternative options above is being passive aggressive, which is:

• Doing what others want but with a grudge.
• Quietly sabotaging things with a false smile.
• Using emotional blackmail and other manipulative strategies to get your own way without explicitly expressing your opinion.
• Trying to provoke feelings of guilt in others to coerce them into doing what you want.

Passive aggressive behavior can flip very easily directly into fully aggressive behavior. In fact people often seesaw between the two extremes.

Examples of responses across all these options

Imagine a situation where you are a performer and have been offered work, which you would love to do. It entails mixing with the right people and will be great to add to your portfolio. It’s going to take up 50% of your time over the Christmas period, when you are usually in demand. Still, they have asked first, and you can still manage to fit in some of the other work so you won’t have to let down most of your regulars.

Just as you are about to head off and celebrate, they mention that the rate is going to be a substantially reduced one. In fact, it is half what you expected, and only a third of what you will earn from the other work you are pretty sure you will be offered. How do you respond?

 

Aggressive option:

“You are having a laugh. I wouldn’t get out of bed for that rate. You can shove that offer where the sun doesn’t shine mate. Good luck with finding some sucker to do that for you!”

Consequences – A terminally damaged relationship between you and that client.

 

Passive option:

“Oh, that’s less than I was expecting, but I really want to work here, so OK, thanks.” (Does mental calculation that they can live on beans on toast for six weeks, and it’ll be worth it in the end.)

Consequences – You suffering potentially unnecessarily, and possible even being thought less of for not standing up for yourself.

 

Passive aggressive option:

“That’s great thanks, I’m really look forward to working with you all.” (Shakes hands while thinking to self, if something better comes along, I’ll just let them down and it’ll serve them right for being so stingy! What a bunch of con artists!).

Consequences – You are unlikely to enjoy this work if you actually do it, and will very likely damage the relationship with that client if you let them down.

 

Assertive option:

“Oh, that rate really is much less than I was expecting. This is my busy time of year, and I will very likely have to let down some of my regular bookings to do this work. I realise that it’s a great opportunity and I would love to do it, but this rate is a problem for me. We are so far apart, I wonder if we are perhaps talking about a slightly different level of commitment of work or time. I would be very happy to chat this through and see if we can find a way to agree to something that works for us both.” (If the rate cannot be budged, there may be some bartering that would be possible, if not, then it should be possible to walk away without any hard feelings on either side.)

Consequences – You will either reach an agreement that works for both of you, or you will part company, with the client understanding what your issues are, and why you are unable to agree. The relationship will be intact, respect for each other will still be there, and you have scope to work together some time in the future, when circumstances are more flexible.

So where are you?

Let’s be honest here, we all spend some time in each of these spaces in the different contexts of our life. Wouldn’t it be great to spend more and more time in assertive mode?

Just for a bit of fun, take the test in this link to see how assertive you are. You don’t need to log your details to do the test unless you want to save and record the results.

Unless you are a super assertive person, (in which case you are unlikely to be reading this) you might be wondering what do you need to do to become more assertive? Our next blog will be packed with tips for being more assertive.

From the last two blogs this month, you will hopefully be well on the way to working out where you are now and where you want to be in the future. Now all you have to do is work out how to get there!

Planning is not just about reaching the destination. It’s important to have some fun/satisfaction on the way. Ever hankered after a gadget or toy, or piece of equipment, but when you got it, were disappointed? Sometimes goals can be like this too, so it’s important to enjoy the journey.

There was an interesting article in The Guardian last year on the 5 Regrets of the Dying, where a palliative care nurse pulled together common themes from dying people. These included ‘being true to yourself’, ‘not working so hard’ and ‘choosing to be happier’. When working towards goals it’s important to keep what you are doing in perspective with the overall goal of having an enjoyable life – or a life that you define as satisfying.

Create goal reminders

Once you know what your goals are, it’s a good idea to create a constant reminder of what you are trying to achieve. One good way is to make a big collage of images, words, colours and photos, which capture the essence of what you want. This is sometimes referred to as a vision board. Pin it up somewhere prominent and add to it as you find new images to include.

Maybe there is one word or phrase that resonates deeply for you, if so, make it your screensaver and pin it up on the wall. Some people prefer to have a musical reminder. Whatever works for you, make sure you expose yourself to it regularly, so you always keep your goals in mind as well as remember how it feels to achieve them.

Identify key milestones

Take each goal and figure out what five things have to happen to allow you to achieve it. Then take each of those steps and work out what five things need to happen to achieve each one of those. Keep doing this, until you start to identify individual actions you can take this week.

Organise all the steps you have just identified, and create your overall plan.  If it helps, do this on a huge sheet of paper, or even your wall, using post-it-notes. That way you can move tasks around, as you find out more about how you are going to do them.

Your action list should drop out of this. If it’s helpful for you to do so, put these actions into your diary to make sure you allocate the time you’ll need to do them.

Find the gaps

Looking at your overall plan, are there any skills or knowledge gaps that you need to address. Do you need to acquire any experience or contacts? If so what are you going to do about that? Add the answer to your action list.

Track and review

Work out a system that works for you to track your progress. That could be scoring off actions on a list or colouring in blocks on a paper or electronic plan. Just make sure you keep reviewing that you are on track.

If you have your plan on the wall with post-it-notes, you could take a photograph, then take notes down as you complete them. Then take another photo each month, and see your progress. Put new steps up in a different colour, so you can tell what is your original plan, and what has developed later.

Celebrate your progress, not just your achievements. Actually put how you are going to celebrate onto the plan, so that having that treat becomes something else you need to knock off your to-do list!

Make your plans public

Start to talk about what it is you are working towards. Tell friends and family, and trusted colleagues. You’ll not only get lots of support and encouragement, especially when you share how much thought you have put into it, you may also get useful advice and honest feedback.

It also helps because by talking about your plans, you are also making a public declaration of your intentions. This is a great way of giving your plan more substance and making you accountable.

Another benefit is that friends and family will proudly chat to others about your plans, and you never know when someone knows someone, who knows someone, who could help!

Stay flexible and open

I always think of goals as setting a direction rather than a destination, because they really just give you something to aim for. Working towards a goal, is like heading along a road. There are junctions where you have to decide if left, right or straight on is best. There are lots of side roads, lay-bys, and really interesting detours you would be mad to miss.

If you can keep your overall target in sight, and still take time to enjoy a few detours, not only will you get experiences you didn’t expected, you may be drawn onto a new path you never even knew existed. Goals should never be written in stone, there should always be some room to accommodate real life happening.

No Regrets

Or as Edith Piaf would say, “Non, je ne regretted rien.” Goals are important, but so is perspective, so make sure you watch how your goals are fitting in with all the parts of your life, family, friends, health etc., and keep your regrets to a minimum.

When the great explorers like Captain Cook, Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong set off to chart new territories, in some cases they had nothing to guide them but the stars, and in Neil Armstrong’s case, he was flying straight at those! What they did have was clear objectives - find new land, climb Everest, or walk on the moon.

In spite of all the current innovations, there is still no technology like Satnav or GPS for navigating the future. Not yet anyway. We still have to find our own ways to identify what it is we care about enough, to aim for in life.

This blog is the second in a series of three. The first one guided you through establishing where you are now. This one is going to cover where you want to go. The third blog will set out how you can make robust plans to get there.

What do you want?

If you are clear about where you’re headed, then that’s great, just make sure that you state it in a positive way. Always state goals in terms of what you do want, not what you don’t.

One of the problems when people wish to give up smoking or lose weight is, they state their goal in negative terms like: “I want to stop smoking,” or “I want to lose 10 pounds.” This doesn’t give them anything to aim for. It really is like jumping into a taxi and saying: “I don’t want to be here!”

You really can’t strive for less of something. You have to state it in terms of what you do want, for example, “I’d like to fit into size X clothes,” or, “I’d like to book a holiday with the money I used to spend on cigarettes.”

For some people, ‘what do you want’, is a tough question. If you are not sure what you want, then maybe you need to start by thinking about what you don’t want. Then you can work out what has to be present to make sure you avoid those things!

Always state your destination in the positive. I’m not sure Christopher Columbus would have got that far had he tried to organise his charts for ‘anywhere but here’!

How will you know you have it?

A great way to really fine tune your destination is to ask what the evidence will be that you have actually arrived:

• What will you see around you?
• Who else will be there?
• What sort of environment are you in?
• What sounds are you hearing?
• What does it feel like?
• How will someone else know you have got there?
• What will they see you doing?
• What changes in you will they be aware of?

If you don’t take the time to work this out, how will you recognise when you get your goals. You could end up continually striving, perhaps beyond the point at which you were happy.

When do you want it?

Not all goals are absolutes, such as climbing Everest. Some involve being more assertive or energetic. So look at what you want, and in each instance, ask yourself when do you want it? Also, where, when and with whom do you not want it?

For example, you might want to have more energy, be someone who gets things done and brushes aside obstacles. This may be great to have at work but do you want to be like this all the time, even for those romantic dates relaxing with your partner?

Is it a good fit for you?

Sometimes we think we want something, or have been told by friends and family for so long that we want it, we daren’t admit we no longer do. Thing is, if you don’t really want it yourself, you will quietly and subconsciously self-sabotage to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Sometimes we lack belief in ourselves or in our right to go for big dreams. As Martha Graeme, dancer and choreographer said:

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. "

Often, we worry that achieving our dreams will have a negative impact on other important areas of our lives. Will we lose friends? Will our relationships survive? Will we still be ourselves?

Take a moment to ask yourself:

• What would happen if I get this?
• How would it change my life?
• Is there anything I would lose if I get this?

Step into the life you want, imagine you have got there. Immerse yourself in this daydream as if everything you ever hoped for has happened. Now ask yourself:

• Does this life match the person I am deep down?
• Is this exactly where I want to be?

If you come across any issues or concerns about your chosen path, you need to do something about them. If you tried this imaginary future on and didn’t feel comfortable, what needs to change?

If you are worried you might lose important relationships, ask yourself how that could happen? See if there are steps you can take to protect those relationships, in as far as you can. Check in again to see if you now feel more comfortable.

Keep refining your goals until you know this is what you want, and feel excited about getting there.

Who’s driving the bus?

Finally, are all the goals you are setting within your control? There is no point in setting goals for your future that you can’t initiate or maintain.

You need to be able to drive this bus, steer this ship, point this rocket, so you can alter course when you decide.

So grab the wheel and enjoy being the great explorer of your own future.

Ever heard the old joke, when a woman asks an old man for directions to the local theatre? He looks at her for a long moment and says: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here!”

Funny thing is, people often make decisions or judgement calls in their businesses without actually knowing where ‘here’ is!

While summer can be very busy for many of us, it is also a time when lots of us have some down time and get the opportunity to do some thinking and assessment. With this in mind it’s an excellent time to find some quiet space, grab a pen and paper and start to jot down all your achievements over the last 12 months - and I mean everything!

How far have you come?

Get out old diaries/action points/work lists and go through them. You may be surprised how much you have done that you’ve forgotten about. I’m not just talking about work but any activities where you acquired skills and made contacts. Perhaps you helped a friend out or got roped into some unexpected experience. What did you gain from it? Include interesting things you tried, even if you felt they weren’t successful, because you will now have information and insights into another area.

Gather up all this information and give yourself a pat on the back for all you have achieved, worked around and/or overcome. Remember where you were at the beginning of that time and recognise what you have learned and how far you have travelled in the last 12 months. Take some time to appreciate your own efforts and achievements.

Throwing out the trash

Now take time to check out the things that didn’t go so well. Maybe have a list headed ‘lessons learnt’.

Look at any negative experiences or ones that didn’t go to plan, recognise what you’ve learned and how valuable that information is to you now. Think about what you could do differently in a similar situation in the future, then, let it go. Don’t waste any more time or emotional energy thinking about it. Take the useful stuff, then send the rest of the experience to your mental trash file, then empty it! It is not useful or helpful to keep raking over the bad stuff for no reason other than personal torture. So don’t do it!

Show me the money!

Get your accounts up to date. Make summaries of your income over the last three years along the lines of:

• Amount earned per month
• Proportion earned on core work
• Proportion earned on ‘work to eat’ activities.

Look at your outgoings and assess them along the lines of:

• Business expenses
• Personal development
• Living expenses
• Luxuries

If you have ever done any analysis of how you spend your time, split that into similar categories. If you have not done this, it’s really useful to do now, so you can track how you spend your time over a month, to assess your actual productivity.

Lay this information out in an ‘easy to see’ summary. See if there are any patterns that might needed changing. For example, maybe you have been caught out financially every year by a particularly fallow month. Having this knowledge can help you to make plans and take extra steps to find suitable work in advance. Or you could plan to take a holiday then, getting extra work lined up for the month before or after.

Some work might be in the ‘work to eat’ category, but is easy to do, and takes care of all your living expenses. In which case, how can you fit this around work you prefer to do?

Seeing your finances set out like this can make things that need to be addressed obvious.

• Where do you spend your time, compared to what generates the majority of your income?
• Could you make economies on your business expenses?
• Have the decisions you have been making strategic or knee jerk?

What needs to change?

Finally, it’s time to work out what it is you want. Maybe you are happy with the status quo, if not what would you like to change? Here are some questions to help you work this out:

• Is there work you want but aren’t getting because you need skills or experience?
• Do you need more down time?
• Do you need more money?
• Do you want more work in a specific area?
• Do you need to make better contacts?
• What do you want more of?
• What do you want less of?

Take time to answer these questions carefully. This will give you a set of challenges to start the next part of this process.

So when you start to look for direction in your business, you will know exactly what your starting point is and this will make it easier to head in the right direction and make the most use of your time.

Watch out for the next blog, which will take you through the next step in the process!

Over the last three blogs, I’ve talked about making good plans, staying motivated and developing resilience. There’s another important aspect to consider - making sure you enjoy the journey!

Sometimes we reach our goals and find out they’re not all they were cracked up to be. If we enjoyed getting there, there may be some disappointment, but we’re not likely to mind too much. We just have to move on to the next best alternative.

If, however, you’ve spent years struggling single-mindedly towards your goal, hating every moment, saying no to every personal pleasure that was not directly related to your target, losing contact with friends and family on the way, how do you think it would feel in these circumstances to get there and not be enamoured with your destination? Pretty disappointing and demotivating to say the least…

How do you make sure you have fun along the way?

Watch where you put your focus

When something goes wrong, do you focus on how awful this thing is, or do you start working out what you can do about it?

When we see an erupting volcano reported on TV, some people see disaster, others beauty, some just roll up their sleeves and go see if they can help clear up! To remain focused and optimistic, it’s important to recognise that where you put your attention is a choice.

There’s a great example of a positive focus in Dumb and Dumber. Jim Carey’s character asks the gorgeous Mary what their chances are of having a relationship. She says one in a million, he responds delightedly: “So there’s a chance!”

Not that I am suggesting blind optimism, but it illustrates the point. He could have collapsed wailing: “What’s wrong with me? Am I unattractive? Am I a bad person?” But he chose to see and focus on the positive point in the situation.

Embrace the value of things going wrong

When you have a horrendous experience on holiday, isn’t that the bit you dine out on for years? So called ‘bad’ experiences are the stuff that makes life interesting. Can you imagine spending 80 odd years on this planet, and nothing bad ever happening?

Think of all the great life lessons you wouldn’t have got because you were never forced to reassess or review your chosen path, never encountered any obstacles?

Can you imagine how boring that would be? Personally, most of my funny stories come from unsuccessful or embarrassing experiences. If I’d never had them, I’d be pretty quiet at dinner parties. OK, I know some people would see that as an advantage, but I wouldn’t undo a single disaster in my life. Every one has made me stronger, even the really awful ones.

Being able to see the funny side of a situation is a powerful tool to help you move on from it. As Richard Bandler, one of the co-developers of NLP says, “People tell me one day I’ll look back and laugh at this, and I say, why wait?”

Think about the meanings you apply to events

When something goes wrong, do you think: “Oh well, better luck next time,” or do you think: “They all hate me, I’m useless!”

It’s the way we interpret an event that allows us to deal with it positively or negatively. We lose our power when we interpret bad things as personally targeted, or blame our ability or even personality for it. Often when we do this we are applying an assumed knowledge or understanding we can’t possibly have.

Instead, we could use our intelligence and powers of analysis, our creativity even, to identify alternative options and opportunities to move forward.

As Shakespeare puts it: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Making yourself personally responsible for every bad event in your life is not helpful. Also, you just don’t have that much power.

Admitting responsibility where it’s appropriate (and learning from mistakes) and taking responsibility for what you do next though is a way of claiming the power you do have.

In The Experiments with Derren Brown, there is an episode about luck. In it, Brown demonstrates how much we influence our ‘luck’ by our expectations. People who saw themselves as lucky, immediately spotted money dropped on the ground while people who saw themselves as unlucky, walked straight past it.

The show demonstrates beautifully that if we expect bad things to happen, we will interpret anything that happens in a negative way. If we expect good things to happen, we will look hard for the benefits of a situation, even when this is a challenge. Either way, we’ll prove ourselves right!

If your natural preference is to look for the down side, then form a new habit, where you always look for an upside. There always is one. This may feel like a chore to start with, but once it’s established, you’ll do it without thinking.

Remain flexibly optimistic

Making goals is like setting a compass. It tells us what direction we’re headed in. If we come across a mountain or big lake, we work around it, then continue on our way in the same general direction. In life, those mountains and lakes will be unforeseen opportunities and calamities.

We can’t control the wider world. We can’t make people hire, love, or treat us with respect. We absolutely can control how we respond and react to each and every event.

So set your compass, pack your sense of humour and head on out there. Be confident that things will all work out just fine and make sure you have a great time in the process.