I can dream endlessly about everything I want to achieve, but it only is a dream unless I have a plan. I am more successful at reaching my goals when I get them out of my head whether it be telling someone else or writing them down. One of my goals for this year is to try something new each month which I talked about in my first Shine Brightly blog post.
As I shared in my last post about my January challenge for the Shine Brightly Project, my goal was to create this blog. When I first began this project, I created a plan by breaking down my goal into 5 simple steps: 1) Month, 2) Challenge, 3) Why do it, 4) Obstacle, and 5) Action Plan. Putting these steps down on paper and breaking it down into manageable steps or chunks helped me to my visualize my the end goal. These 5 steps can be used for completing any goal, but in this example, I will give instructions based on my Shine Brightly Project, which is to try something new each month, and the instructions describe how to complete the form. See below for the colorful image/form for the Shine Brightly Project.
Step 1- Month:
First, write down the month that you’re planning to complete the goal. Your deadline to complete your goal is a month. By setting a deadline, it’ll help you not to procrastinate. You want to complete this entire worksheet a few days or weeks before that month.
The month I started the Shine Brightly Project was in January of 2017.
Step 2- Challenge:
Next, you want to identify the new thing you’re trying to do for that month. This new thing could be something small as eating something exotic like durian or it can be something big like learning how to form a website.
For the month of January, I challenged myself to start a blog.
Step 3- Why do it:
Then, you want to ask yourself why should you do this challenge. You should give a good reason for trying this new thing. This will help you when you become doubtful in completing the challenge. You can always turn back to the worksheet and remind yourself of why you started this goal in the first place.
My purpose for starting this blog is to share my personal journey with others and to inspire them to shine brightly.
Step 4- Obstacle:
In addition, you want to target the obstacles or road blocks that you’re going to face in this challenge. These obstacles may prevent you from becoming successful and set you back from your deadline. You don’t want to be naive going into the project.
For my blog project, technology and lack of motivation are my biggest obstacles. I have experience using Blogger, but not WordPress, which is what I’m going to use to build this blog. Trying to figure out how to build a website will be difficult. Also, I can be my worst enemy because once I can’t figure out the technology, I can lack motivation. Or perhaps, I can see starting a blog to be a greater task than I expected, I can easily give up.
Step 5- Action Plan:
Now that you know your obstacles and why you want to accomplish your challenge, you want to write a step by step process of how to achieve your goal while avoiding your obstacles. You want to have a plan when you run into your obstacles and road blocks, so that you persevere.
My steps to: 1) Research through books, internet and Youtube for tutorials of how to use WordPress, 2) Follow steps from tutorials by trial and error, 3) Write 1st blog post, and 4) Seek friends for emotional support when I lack motivation. When I ran into my foreseen obstacles such as technology and lack of motivation, I turned to my action plan. So, when my website wasn’t functioning properly, I turned to Google to find tutorials on Youtube and website. Then, I followed it step by step to trouble shoot. When I wanted to give up with my blog because I was tired of it, I met up my friend, Jinnia, and she encouraged me to keep going. My action plan was a life saver!
Conclusion
By having this plan, I succeeded at creating this blog. I want others to be thrive at the Shine Brightly Project, so I created this visual guide to help you with your Shine Brightly Project or monthly goals. There may be other ways to help you to accomplish your goals as there are many book and websites that talk about it. These steps are a tried and proven successful by me.
I hope you will challenge yourself to try something new each month or create monthly goals. You can click on the link below for a PDF, which you edit it by filling in the form and save it.
Let’s make our monthly goal a reality! Feel free to share your Shine Brightly Project’s monthly plan in the comments.
