With all the talk of the new year and new decade there has been a lot of talk about New Years resolutions, life goals and finding your passion. I’m pretty passionate about my love of travel and photography. If I didn’t need my day job, I’d quit and spend my days taking photos, reading books and traveling the world as much as possible!
While I think I’m pretty solid with my goals, I have friends who are not so clear. The big thing seems to be that they are stuck on the big hamster wheel of life and don’t know how to get off and do something different than they have always done. So they ask how do I make the change?
Change is not easy. I look at my life a decade ago and look at it now and it could almost be two completely different people I have changed so much. Getting to this point was not easy. I set small, obtainable goals and worked on them a little bit at a time setting new goals once I met my old ones. I knew where I wanted my life to be, so I made a plan to get there. I broke it down into smaller pieces and tackled them one piece at a time. It didn’t seem like much when I was working on them. But a decade later all those little things added up to big changes.
I find most people dream of how they want their life to be. Some dream of material things they want. Others dream of personal goals to better themselves physically or mentally. Others dream of seeing far off lands. (I live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area to me the Golden Gate Bridge is just a way to get home while avoiding the ball parks when games are about to get out. But for others it’s a dream to see it in person.) Some may know their dreams, others may be so stuck in a rut that they have no idea where to even start. Some people may be so unhappy with…well everything that they want to change it all! But no matter what their dreams are (if they even know them). The big breakdown seems to be the unwillingness to change from their old ways to make space for their new goals and eventually their new life. Everyone had heard the saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. But you can teach them new tricks. It’s just harder than when they are a puppy. People are the same way because they are set in their ways and old habits are hard to break.
My suggestion is to break it up into smaller pieces and celebrate the small successes. Let’s say you have 100 lbs to loose. That sounds like an impossible undertaking. But if you break it up into ten 10 lb chunks it doesn’t sound so intimidating. 10 lbs… I can do that! Then when you loose the first 10 set your goal to loose 10 more for a total of 20 and so on. Let’s say you want to save more money. Using the same idea let’s say you are going to make coffee at home in the morning before work and put the $5 a day you were going to spend on coffee into a jar to save. That gives you $25 a week, $100 a month and $1200 by the end of the year. A decade from now that $5 a day will then turn into $12,000! Small changes can add up over time and become a big deal.
So I ask you… what changes do you want to make in your life? Where do you see yourself in 2030? How can you get from where you are in 2020 to where you want to be in 3030?
Working Mom - Travel Dreams 