I’m in the middle of a self-directed planning retreat staycation week. I cleared my calendar and set aside nearly a week to focus on my business, and where I want to go with it in 2013. How I can bring more ease and delight into my day-to-day work.
The irony is, that I’ve found myself doing the opposite of that with the planning and imagining. I’m making it hard and difficult and shutting down and abandoning ideas before I can fully form them.
The main problem is, I want guarantees. I want to know in advance that what I’m considering will be useful to you. That I will enjoy it as much as I think I will. That it will help me grow and spread my message as a champion of easy change and doing things you never dreamed possible.
You can’t get there from here.
Choosing only to do things that are a sure bet is a recipe for dissatisfaction and a boring life (not the good kind of boring either). I know, I’ve lived that way before.
It’s also not the kind of planning that has allowed me to accomplish all of the things I’ve done in the last few years. There are no guarantees when I climb. There are no guarantees when I run. There are no guarantees when I write. And yet, I’ve done, and continue to do all of these things.
That’s when it occurred to me.
Why don’t I make a plan for my business like I made for marathon training, or finishing NaNoWriMo? There weren’t any guarantees with those plans, and yet I took the steps, did my best, and felt good about my effort. Sometimes I had to reassess when things came up, and change my expectations. Every time, I accomplished more than I would have without a plan at all.
Now I’m working on my plan from that perspective. I know how to do that. I’m also looking forward to sharing some of those ideas I originally dismissed.
How about you?
Are you doing any planning for 2013? How’s it going? I’d love to hear, either here in the comments or on the Perception Studios Facebook page.
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