Vision, Goals, and Action Items

With the New Year here, what a great time to talk about what you want from your life this year.  Of course, I am talking about your health.  I know the rest of your life is also important, but the rest of your life won’t be everything you want it to be if you don’t have your health, so health is the focus.  How can you get there without vision, goals, and action items?

Most people don’t define what they want from their life. 

They just live.  They put their head in the sand and just continue moving forward and that is unfortunate.  Well, I suppose, if they are content and it works for them, who am I to say.

If you want more from your life, definition and planning is required.

What do you want from your health?

Do you want to improve it?

Do you want it to stay the same?

Do you want to maintain health through your life?

What does a healthy you look like? 

If you haven’t really thought about it, maybe those are some questions you want to answer first.  It will help you define your healthy life.  Imagine what you look like, how old you are, what you are doing, where you are going.  What does a typical day look like?  What do your vacations look like?  How do you enjoy your free time?

If you can answer these questions, this will define the vision for your healthy life.

And if you want to take it further, make a vision board to represent this healthy life to you.  Something you can look at every day to remind you of where you are headed.

But this is only a vision.  Beautiful, but still only a vision.

How are you going to make it real?  A vision will only become real if you are actively working towards it.  This is where New Year’s resolutions fall apart.  They are a good idea, but it stops there.

I recommend taking that beautiful vision and breaking it down into goals.  Goals are like the steppingstones to your vision.  You might have to spend some time here, breaking down your vision into big steps.  Not the tiny details, we will get there.  Now it is the big steps that will get you to your vision.  Again, goals are great but only if they exist with a timeframe around them to keep you moving forward.  If you are going to take the time to set a goal, make sure you know when you want to complete it.

That isn’t all.  Nope, you can’t just stop at your goal because goals are just big ideas. 

How do the goals get finished?  Well you need action items.  The details of completing the goal are your action items.  And each action item may have sub-action items.  The action items define the activities that need to be done to complete the goal.  And yes, they should have time wrapped around them as well and people that can help you complete the item as well.  You don’t have to be a one person show.  If there are people that can help you get it done, see if they are willing to support you.

It feels like so much. 

I know, it can.  But it really is just about focus, intention, and scheduling.  And if you break it out into little pieces, so much easier to handle.

And after all that, you are probably thinking “screw this, it’s too much work”.

Let me ask you a couple of questions.

Are you happy with your health?

If you do nothing, were will it be in 1 year, 3 years, 10 years? 

The longer you wait, the harder it is to come back to a healthy state.  And the cost of being sick is ridiculous.

Make yourself a priority and give yourself the tools to be successful.

Do it now, don’t wait until the state of your health is something you can’t ignore.

Take care and have a wonderful week.