Creating A New And Better Plan

Nothing just happens. If you want to see positive changes in your life, you’ve got to create the strategy to make it happen. Most people have sincere motives to change the quality of their lives, yet things have grown worse. But that’s because they keep using the same approaches that have always kept them grounded. Changing from the old to the new is all about emotion mastery. It’s all about doing what you have to do, not just doing what you feel like doing.

One of such change strategies is creating a new and better plan for your life. With it, you can overcome any form of financial, health, emotional or marital challenge. If you have been following our series of ‘When Times Are Tough, Which Way Do You Go?’, you’ll be familiar with the first four steps in the series:
First, you take a break, relax and get ready to think. Second, you start thinking by asking questions. Third, you move to find answers. And fourth, you make sure your answers and solutions are in line with your life goals and values.

Step five: Create a New and Better Plan

If you have taken your time to go through the first four steps, you would have armed yourself with enough ideas to create a new approach or strategy that would completely solve the major challenge you are currently facing.

Redefine your goals. Many people launch out to solve a problem they have not properly defined. If your goals are not clear enough, your plan will not be strong enough to achieve them. It is a plan based on clear goals that will provoke the energy, discipline and vitality needed to bring about a breakthrough in that endeavour.

Write down your goals. It has been said that only about 3% of the world’s population have written goals. And the amazing thing is that every one of these 3% achieves in a few years what most other people never achieve in their lifetimes. That is amazing! If written goals are so important, why then are most people not setting them? The answer: setting goals regularly requires more discipline than many people are willing to undergo. But the good news is that you can join this successful class by changing your attitude in the next few seconds. Take a minute to write down a major life goal. And then set a deadline to achieve it…immediately. This is a sure way to instantly bring transformation to your life.

Prioritize Your Tasks. Every worthwhile goal requires a list of tasks to achieve it. List out everything you need to do to achieve each goal. Then organize them into a simple step-by-step plan. For the ones you need to do regularly, prioritize them in order of importance. Then make up your mind to accomplish the most important tasks in order of priority.

Identify Obstacles on your path. Many succeed in making good plans but fail to realize that there will be challenges. For instance, if you are planning to break a habit, you should be ready to fight the emotional pains that will want to stop you from carrying on with your plan. Don’t assume that things would just happen because you have a strategic plan. You’ve been swimming with the tide, now you’re about to swim against it. Therefore be determined to follow through with your plan. Many people give up not because they lack the capacity to follow through but because they were not ready to deal with certain obstacles along the way.

It is important that you list out the difficulties that you are likely to encounter along the way. Don’t assume anything. Then write out what would be your automatic response to each of those anticipated obstacles. Are you going to just give up or are you going to find a way to manage it without giving up on your mission? Write out what you will do. This is a fool-proof strategy for handling obstacles long before they show up.

Brian Tracy in his book, Goals! puts it this way, ‘Every minute you spend planning and thinking before you begin a quest, will save you time, energy and money in getting the results you desire… the number one reason for failure is action without planning.’
I recommend this book for you. It is one of the best books written in recent times on planning. Remember that if you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail. Start planning your way out of that challenge right away.
We’ll continue next month. You will succeed!