As I’ve shared and you may know, fostering dreams can be scary business, and setting goals can feel like an ultimatum or challenge to how you do life. We need to be in a stable enough place to shift life as we know it and determine what we want to do differently.

Now, if we determine things in life that need to change and we’re in a place that is steady enough to make changes, then how can we go about doing that? The following three steps are simple but challenging in their potential impact on our lives!

1. Name what you want. There isn’t magic in this so much as there is clarity of vision and hope. It doesn’t need to be a particular image or picture of life. Maybe it’s a way you’d like to feel or something you’d like to say about your life or state of being. As an example, I want to be someone who learns and consistently expands my horizons. (I will say, writing down your vision does have power to inspire. I can’t quote the precise science on this, but writing and seeing our vision has the ability to compel us more than keeping ideas in our heads!)
2. Determine tasks or accomplishments that would help you get to your vision. What would you like to do to live into your vision? To continue my example, I see myself as a person who is always learning. Therefore, one of my goals for this year is to read more authors that don’t look like me and/or have different life experiences. I read 10 such authors last year, and I want to read more than that this year. It isn’t a be-all, end-all, but the goal (counting more authors different from myself) helps me reach the vision of being a person who learns.
3. Decide what you can do each day to step toward your goal. I’m learning that if you build a habit into your life in such a way that it becomes routine, then achieving the goal becomes inevitable. I get practice with this now for learning: I schedule an hour each day for reading. As long as I keep that up, then I can’t help but finish books, right? In the same way, adding a 15-minute daily walk or making a point to message a friend each day are simple habits that can build toward other goals and sustain other visions of life. Holding to the daily habits keeps me moving steadily toward my goal, which feeds my vision.

Habits (Point #3) contribute to goals (Point #2) which feed the vision (Point #1). You need the end result in mind, but today’s steps are the things that help you get there. Exciting, isn’t it?

Taking a few minutes to consider these options can get you going toward life change, however that looks, in whatever way you need.

All the best to you as you consider the areas of your life that call for change. May you have the courage to declare the vision, determination to set the goals, and persistence to follow through in the little ways. God bless!