Your Life in Action Steps

As we’ve been working to set ourselves up for success in 2017, I deal a lot with action steps. Lots of reading (and now lots of experience!) has shown me that breaking up big goals into bite-sized steps is a much easier way of getting big things done.

Breaking it down helps you think things through and have a solid plan from the very beginning. You know exactly where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

Action steps can apply to every day life, not just big business goals!

The fastest way to never reaching your goal is to have an unclear path of how you’re going to get there. When things are unclear, they’re a little intimidating. Even if you know how to start, what do you have in place to keep you going when the excitement wears off?

Write down your end goal. Put it on paper so it’s there for the world to see. (Yes, you need to physically write them down! Trust me on this one. Once you do it, you’ll see the difference it makes.)

Starting from you goal, work backwards to determine what needs to be done to make it happen. Write down every little action, from the top all the way to your very first baby step.

How does this work in real life?!

Let’s say you want to put away an extra $1000 into savings by the end of 2017.

Goal: Save additional $1000 by Dec 31st, 2017 <– Notice how there’s a deadline on this?

Break it down: In order to do that, you’ll need to save an extra $84 every month.

That’s about $21 a week.

Now that you know a more bite-sized goal, you can put together some action steps to make that happen:

One: Skip Thursday’s trip to Starbucks (save $5)

Two: Bring lunch from home on Tuesday (save $10)

Three: Check your grocery store’s sale ad and plan one budget dinner with items on a great sale (save $5)

Four: Put back one impulse purchase item so you can “think” about it. Chances are you didn’t really care that much about it in the first place. ($5+)

Disclaimer: I realized most of these have to do with food, but that’s one thing we can all relate to! :)

So just like that, you have a very easy action plan that will pack away at least $25 into savings every week just by being aware of how you want to accomplish your end goal.

Side note: once you start watching your savings grow by easy, planned little steps, you’ll be motivated to look for ways to save even more!

There are so many other ways to apply this to your goals, big or small, but hopefully this will help you start thinking about how breaking big things down into smaller actions can make a huge difference!

Don’t get to December 31st with only $248 extra in your savings account because your New Year’s Resolution lost steam in February.

What are two big goals in your life that you just haven’t started on yet? How can you break it down, step by step, into something you can actually get excited about checking off your to-do list every week?

Happy goal reaching!!

*hugs*

Amber