When you’ve reached the final stages of constructing your ideal lifestyle vision, you are going to start working on the most important factor of your transition into a life of freedom: the plan.
Your plan, complete with goals, tasks, and deadlines, is going to usher you into your ideal lifestyle. It is going to help you become the person that you’ve always wanted to be and live the life that you’ve always wanted to live.
Without it, you would be ineffectively chasing your dreams and holding yourself back from getting to where you need to be.
Don’t get too excited too quickly. Planning out your dream lifestyle is not a thing to be rushed. It’s a thing of beauty to be crafted, and molded to your heart’s content.
I am going to help further help you construct your plan by sharing with you 3 key characteristics of a successful plan.
Are you ready to hear them? Here they are!
Step #1. Devise a Plan That Is VERY Specific
Specificity is…
- Necessary if you want to avoid having to go back to your plan and making edits
- NOT OPTIONAL
With that in mind, I want you to take a look at your current plan, which you crafted with me in the third section of my e-book, 3 Steps to Living Your Perfect Day, and I want you to expand upon it.
Let’s say, for example, that one of the aspects of your lifestyle vision is to be able to work from home selling a whole range of beauty products. In response, you wrote something like this:
As soon as possible, I am going to start making my own beauty products, open an online store, and begin selling them.
Do you see what’s wrong with this plan? It’s not exactly a plan.
All you’ve accomplished in writing this down is creating another dream for yourself. It’s not specific and it’s certainly not going to help you do what you want.
How do we change that?
Well, we figure out what it is you have to do to reach your goal.
Map out all the necessary steps, give yourself a time frame, and then rewrite your plan. A finished product may look a little something like this:
By next December, I am going to learn about all the aspects of planning and running a home-based business by doing an online course through Udemy on this topic.
By January, I want to have learned all about the permits, laws, and taxes associated with home-based businesses in my area.
By February, I want to have learned all about how to run a home-based business including marketing, shipping, packaging, etc.
By April, I will have learned to create the beauty products I have in mind and I will have some samples ready for launch.
This is by no means an extensive example and it can certainly be improved but now you understand what we’re looking for.
The better you know what it is you want to do and by when, the easier it will be to accomplish your goals.
Step #2. Make Your Plan Actionable
As I just stated, dates are also necessary when it comes to good planning. In the example above, we have a general monthly date.
However, this will not be acceptable when it comes to crafting your plan.
Your plan should consist of very specific goals followed by exact dates. If we continue using the example above, it may look a little more like this:
January 10th- Call my local city hall and ask them about what is required of home-based business owners in the area. Talk to them about zoning laws, permits, sales tax, and any other information that is necessary for me to know.
January 20th- Look deeper into each of the aspects that were discussed on the phone so I will know what to expect when I register my business in my city.
February 1st- Start taking a 4-week online business class that will help me learn about all of the aspects of running my own business.
March 1st- Research business coaches who have worked in my industry and look into receiving coaching to be prepared for what I will be doing after launch.
You see the pattern here, right?
The more you research your goal and the work that needs to be done in order to reach it, the easier these mini goals will be to come up with.
Even this can be broken down into smaller sections so if you feel as though your goals need to be more tightly scheduled, do it.
Remember, however, that these goals need to absolutely be done by their time frame.
If you fail to meet your deadlines, you may go off course or become so discouraged with yourself that you give up on your ideal lifestyle vision.
Who wants that? Not us!
Step #3. Keep Your Plan Realistic
I think the biggest issue that happens when we are pumped up about our exciting dreams is that we tend to overlook the minute details.
For this person above, they really want to run a home-based business creating beauty products and that’s great.
What may not be so great is if they’re creating this plan and they have absolutely no business experience, money, or experience creating beauty products.
I’m not saying that they won’t be able to reach their goals. What I’m saying is that they need to be more realistic about how they’re going to accomplish them.
If you were this person, I sincerely doubt that the 5-month goal you planned above would be sufficient time to learn everything you need to know.
Although it’s totally possible to get everything done within that timeframe, you have to look deep enough to see if you truly can accomplish it.
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- Do you have the funding?
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- Do you know how to get the funding?
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- Is that really enough time to learn all about how to run a home-based business?
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- Will that one class you are going to take be enough?
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- Do you have the extra money to spend on classes and coaches?
- Are you in the right place and mindset to launch your business right now?
Asking yourself these questions will help you set realistic goals and give you confidence to make your idea a reality.
It is okay to take a little more time to achieve your dream. It is okay to take only a couple of small steps at a time.
If you could achieve freedom instantly, there wouldn’t be a need for books or a process!
Know yourself and take time to develop a plan that is best suited for you.
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- Maybe you need to extend that time frame from 5-months to 12-months.
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- Maybe you want to take a longer class that will further benefit you.
- Maybe you want to get in touch with some of your old contacts who may be able to help you.
Whatever it is that you think will be the most beneficial for you, write it down and don’t put yourself down over the time frame or the steps.
The plan, besides being the most important part of cultivating your ideal lifestyle, also tends to be the most difficult.
If you need help crafting it, I definitely recommend that you check out my Plan Your Ideal Freedom Year Online Doing Workshop to achieve all this in 90 minutes or less!
I will show you how to:
- Phase 1: Setting your vision for 2018 and figuring out your priorities.
- Phase 2: Mapping out quarterly, monthly, and weekly actions that are aligned with your yearly goals and vision.
- Phase 3: Helping you craft a Content, Marketing and Editorial calendar that will help you achieve freedom and success. I will give my exact template to use!
- Phase 4: Teaching you my 6 step daily success plan that will help you unlock your productivity potential.
- Giving you questions that you need to ask yourself in order to get the most out of my workshop and your year ahead.
On top of all this, I will also be providing you two super valuable bonuses to make sure that you take action straight away. Head to nataliesisson.com/workshop to get started.