Have you ever noticed how some people seem to have a plan and know where they are going? They have their lives figured out – most likely except for one or two minor details.

Is there something different between these people who design the lives they desire and others who seem to be “aimlessly drifting” through without direction or purpose? And if so, what is it?

I believe that the answer lies in focusing on your goals and looking at your dreams, hopes, and plans for the next five years. Change your trajectory, even if it’s only step by step. So, if you don’t know where you would like to be tomorrow, then at least think about next week or next year – whatever seems feasible.

Are you ready to take the next step? If so, you must know what you desire, know how to get there and make the change.

How do you define the life you want?

Do you need to be in better health? Do you need more clients/customers? Do you need to earn more and have more power? Do you need to learn something new or develop a new skill set?

No matter your goals, there is one thing in common: they all require some change. It would help if you stopped doing what’s not working for you and start doing something to bring the results you desire. We’re talking about taking steps into the unknown, which requires courage, good successful relationships, self-discipline and focus.

By staying focused on your goals – no matter how small the steps may seem at first – your life will transform before your eyes…success is not free!

So let me ask again – Are YOU ready for it?!

How do you create a life you’re happy with?

The key to create the life you want for yourself is by attaining the right mindset and working out what you need and want. To turn your current situation around action is required- no matter how bad it may be…no matter how bad the past was, no matter the person that you are right now and your fears.

All you need to do is take the first step and start to build your self-confidence, start to flip the script to a positive attitude, and design a plan and work your plan. Commit to create the life you want to live!

In this chapter of my blog, I will show you how I took my personal challenges and turned them into opportunities. Later on, I’ll share with you some related tips that helped me design a life (and a career) that I’m delighted with. (sure there are elements to work on and that is the way it is!)

If nothing else, at least you’ll have some source of inspiration along the way!

Where Are You Now?

What is the meaning of creating a life You love?

The idea of living a life we love sounds great, but many times it’s not that straightforward. So many people say they need to live this way, yet they have no clue where to start or move in the direction of their dreams.

But think about it for a moment: what would be more valuable than having a good career, lots of cash, a nice car, a big house/apartment? These are all superficial – at least that’s my own opinion; without health they are nothing!

What really matters is being able to wake up in the morning and look yourself into the mirror without judging yourself harshly. What matters is waking up with joy, a smile on your face, ready to take on whatever challenges may come your way. This is what I call “a life you don’t need a vacation from!”

How do I begin to create my life?

To create your life, you first need to have a solid plan for how you’re going to do it and where you are planning on ending up. Keep in mind that even if you are only thinking about next week or next month – the process starts TODAY.

What would we make happen if we applied this principle to our lives? What would be different? Would we be happier? More productive? Less stressed out with less frustration burning into us 24/7? IS this even possible?!

My answer is YES! It’s 100% possible, and I’m living proof of it! You can find my story below:

“Why Don’t We All Have A Life Like This?

A good question and one that is all down to goal setting and support. If you don’t have a plan and you don’t have goals you are like a ship off course…

Can life be created?

Absolutely! You can create a happy, prosperous life by taking on the right mindset first – then move into action. So what if you haven’t found your perfect role yet or you still don’t have enough cash to make all your dreams come true? Read on…

I know it’s hard at times, and I’m not saying everything happens overnight, but there is a way for everyone to get their desired results with time and proper planning…So ask yourself now: why don’t we all have our dream careers, nice homes, great cars, look good (or better) than we do today? Why are there people struggling to make ends meet while others struggle despite having more income? There’s got to be some magic secret that all the successful people don’t tell us on purpose.

Yes, there is, and it is GOAL SETTING! I said it!

How do I build a life I love? In three easy steps

Step 1: Set your goals and figure out where you aim to be at some point in the future.

Step 2: Create a plan that will take you there (what steps do I have to take?).

Step 3: Take action and make it work. This means stop sitting on your butt watching Netflix every night after work or school. 🙁 Now is the time for you to get productive and start moving in the right direction! Do something useful – anything! Even if it’s as small as folding laundry, don’t just sit idle waiting for miracles to happen…they won’t!

Where would I like to be?

I hate my life and need a new one!

I’m not rich enough yet, but I earn well every month.

I’m not in the physical shape that I aim to be.

I’m not married yet and would like to have a relationship.

My house is just an apartment above my parent’s garage. It’s fine, but I’d rather own a home.

Hopefully, by now, you’ve figured out where you are and where you would like to be because it will help us keep perspective as we move forward doing this exercise together. The next part of this process involves goals… Yes, they’re important if you desire your dreams to become a reality! I’ll explain more on that later… You can do this on paper or with a computer…it doesn’t matter – there are no rules here! Just make sure you do it so we can get on with designing the life you desire to live!!

FOCUS Until you have achieved your goal

A lot of people before they even start on the path to a wonderful life speak to their family who tell them they cannot do it. They give up because their expectations are too ambitious. To stop yourself from losing the will to quit, concentrate on some little victories along the way and don’t tell anyone except perhaps your cheerleaders and colleagues who may help you.

Facing failures and challenges will strengthen you if you see them as opportunities to learn rather than seeing them as a dead end. Your brain is creative and the more you search the world to create the change needed the higher your energy levels and the world will listen to you. If you change the way that you see the world it will change and your effort will be rewarded.

Stay away from negative influences, stay away from the pizza menu and put some effort in to your wonderful life.

You can hope for a happier future and one where you are achieving all the positive steps to create the life you don’t need a vacation from.

Utilise your talents and skills in a positive way, so you feel energized.

What a life I love doesn’t mean

It doesn’t feel like I need more… something. Overall, I love my daily life. But this doesn’t mean that I’m constantly satisfied all the time. On the contrary, it has actually been a while since I’ve pursued happiness in earnest.

I am present enough that I enjoy the feeling of happiness and still feel comfortable. I deliberately build in emotion to create passion, conviction, calm, playful and loving states. I learn to do more uncomfortable things. I believe in doing good. If that’s what you enjoy, you will be doing something even if you find yourself uncomfortable.

We all have fears, negatives happen to us, but you still need to move forward to live the life you choose to live, sometimes life just happens to us and we are oblivious to how we got there.

The relationships around us are just there through no conscious choice of our own, we had no plan, we had no success in building the relationships that supported us on the journey to create the life we didn’t need a vacation from.

If you believe that you can discover amazing new experiences and choose the way to live, you will definitely create the ideas to break the chains of your past.

All you need to do is take the first step. Become the person that you choose to be, don’t just spend time associating with people who you find yourself in contact with if they don’t support you on your journey, our lives just happen to us and it is how we respond that makes a difference. If they aren’t on your menu then take a break.

Complete your work and ALL will fall into place, your ideas are powerful and will generate real results.

If you are ready to discover more about that successful positive person that you are; don’t be surprised that you will need to invest a small amount of money, sure you can get free services on the internet, but each free service has a motive behind it.

Where Are You Now VS Where Would You Like To Be

– What is your current situation? – What would make for an ideal situation for you? – How can these two opposites come together for them both to work well together?

Before you begin to develop your personal brand, it is crucial to take the time to decide where you want to be. You can make the most of your life opportunities; you can create the life you want. But, you need to trust yourself and have a plan.

Knowing where you are going in your car is key to keeping you from burning all your fuel driving around with no direction. 

If you are completely miserable at work and are living for your vacation time, do not worry, there will be skills you are learning that will be valuable for when you do find the type of work you love.

Sometimes your life may fall to pieces before you can rebuild it

I was miserable; I was working all the hours to squeeze in between doing childcare; exercising, drinking and womanising seemed like my only escape.

I had just left my wife and moved in with a friend of mine called Stu; it was a bit like Joey and Chandler from an episode of friends, and we used to watch movies, drink beer and laugh a lot.

If you are really stuck, then ask for help and fast

Thankfully before total self-destruction set in, a friend of mine introduced me to a coach called Barry to get my life on track.

If you are anything like me, you put a brave face on and try to be happy, getting as much fulfilment and enjoyment from the life you enjoy so you can ignore your problems and pretend that everything is alright.

Before building your brand working out what you are aiming towards is crucial. When I met Barry, I had no idea what I wanted; I was swamped managing social media for my clients, writing content and managing LinkedIn groups.

I booked up 10-weeks of coaching, and every week without fail, Barry helped me understand the pain or lack of activity; that was in many cases holding me back from the actions that would get me to the place of having a life I didn’t need a vacation from.

It was emotional. The pain he put me through every week was unbelievable. Although looking back on it now, I didn’t realise how unhappy I was at the time and the emotional baggage I had been carrying around. But, like I said, “I put a brave face on and made the most of it.”

It was a cathartic process working out what I wanted and putting it down on paper

Over the 10 weeks, I realised that my life was completely out of balance and the only way to get it in shape was to firstly work out where I wanted to go. Work out which elements were out of balance and then, take action. 

Generally, nothing works in life unless you do! Sure sometimes it is easy, but generally, that is just because you are enjoying what you are doing and have honed your skills.

What do you want in life?

It all starts with awareness, where are you VS where you want to go.

The most important thing is being aware of what you want in life and where you are heading, not wallowing in the pain of where you are now. The more you focus on where you are now and what you are unhappy about, the more your brain will look for more to be disappointed and dissatisfied with and continue the cycle of unhappiness.

The more we focus on elements of our lives, the more they expand, and if you take the time to think about where you would like to be, you will be able to focus on a plan.

When I began building my brand, I found it quite daunting, and looking back; I wish that I had taken the time to decide where I wanted to go much sooner.

Take the time to think about how happy you are at work

There are many different criteria for analysing where you are in your career. There are the monetary ones, the time constraints, the recognition and the overall happiness goals. Most importantly, you must be honest with yourself; if you are pleased with work, then you can get on with building the wording you need to show off your key attributes.

If you are not happy at work and have not created the life you want yet, you must begin to trust yourself and the self-realization you are going through.

All your experiences have made you the individual that you are today

Going to interviews can certainly mess up your self-esteem, and you can begin to doubt your skills. So sometimes you have to stop all activities and think about where you want to go; this may seem like the worst advice if you are desperate, but it is the only way you can take control of your career; it is a bit like when you are lost in your car and decide to drive around aimlessly with no knowledge of where you are.

Luckily for me, I realised that I wanted to get into marketing and the failed interviews I went to are now just fun times in my life to look back on.

“Failure is a big part of success”

Michael Tobin, OBE Technology Entrepreneur

I got sick of recruiters using sales techniques to persuade me to attend interviews with the promise of a great career, a brand-new Mercedes, pension, healthcare, etc. Then when I left, they never spoke to me again; sick of the endless miles I drove with PowerPoint decks that took me two days to create and the expense of printing them for someone to tell me that I was too senior.  

The desperation can set in like poison, the worry about not being able to afford to eat, the stress that our spouse puts us under to pay for the next vacation or other things that they want. However, these experiences can be used to help catapult us to new levels of success.

Things happen for a good reason, though it may not be apparent at the time

We may think that the opportunity we have in front of us is exactly what we want, but it could cause us to be in a worse position, a bit like the ridiculous interview I went to with a professional con artist.

One of my best friends, Louis got me an interview in London at a company selling investments, the CEO interviewed me, and he took great pleasure in saying, “You look like shit!” In fact, I went home and looked in the mirror and remember thinking he was right, so I vowed to look after my skin after that.

It turned out he was a con artist who conned a lot of people here selling fake Jatropha oil to would-be investors and went on the run from the cops after emptying the bank account and never paying any of the 60+ members of the telesales team!

Everything in life happens for a reason and this was one of those times, amusing now looking back on those moments… Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Sometimes in life, we are meant to stop and smell the coffee

Taking the time to revisit where I wanted to go has started to pay dividends. I spent a considerable amount of time deciding what I loved to do versus what had to be done, which came with a realisation that I loved to write. 

Despite the encouragement from friends and family to get a full-time role making sales, I am still very skilled from back when I used to sell wine. So I decided to stick to my guns and now get paid to write, create content and help people with their brands and marketing.

At the time of writing this blog article I had just been asked to write two blogs and record a video and was paid more money than I used to earn in a month in one day.

Creating a life, you don’t need a vacation from

Taking the time to think about what is a perfect life for you at work may sound extremely corny, but really it should be something you give some thought to; integrating your work into your life and creating a life that has balance is certainly something to strive for. 

More often than not, some elements of your life will be out of balance on occasion. Making your work and life co-exist are the key elements to a happy life. Working out what your perfect life looks like should be your top priority. List all the key elements of that and put a plan together for where you want to be. 

Trust yourself to come up with the right strategies along the way

The good news is your brand plan is not fixed too much like that, you can come up with an objective, and as long as you follow certain steps to become more visible and build more authority and credibility and, of course, take action, you will be able to hit your objective despite your strategy or interests perhaps changing along the way.

A perfect day for you may be driving to work (or being on Zoom) and then spending time in meetings with clients; it all depends on what you love to do and how you want to live.

The perfect life for me is waking up at 5, or 6 am, exercising for an hour or two and then getting stuck into reading the news, writing articles and inviting new guests onto our podcast show. 

Some people want to work for a corporation, and others want to work for themselves. You should consider this; do you want to leave the certainty of a regular paycheck to chase the entrepreneurial dream? Or are you happy working for a corporation?

You will still have to do things at work that you don’t like, but the more you realise what you do like, the more you will excel in these areas. If you build your brand around the things you love, a new opportunity may come along, partner with someone who loves to do the things you hate may arrive or an opportunity to reduce the time doing the things you hate. 

If you don’t work out what you like and don’t like, how do you expect to build more of the life you want?

Now take the time to list all the things that you really enjoy doing and list the things that you would like to learn more about that you could make a career from; focusing on what you want and taking the time to learn more is a sure-fire way to have a more rewarding life.

Remove stress from making fast decisions

This helps you remove the stress from making a decision and alleviates the risk of following your emotions. It is good to have all your thoughts on a piece of paper versus in your head, where they can drive you to distraction. You can review this every few months for progress and update it accordingly.

Where am I now? VS Where do I want to Be? How Do I get there?

Most of us start with a vision in our head for where we would like to be. The problem is that it’s easy to forget about the work required when you’re caught up in your day-to-day activities and responsibilities. It’s time to take stock of what you have done and how far you’ve come so far while also setting new goals for where you see yourself going next. This blog post will help with this process by providing some perspective on where you are now and some concrete steps on how to move forward towards your desired destination.

What Do I Want To Achieve?

We all have a vision and goals for our future. But what do we do? How can we make sure that the things we’re doing every day align with our desired outcomes? What’s the best way to figure out how you’ll know when you’ve reached your goal? Join us and read this informative GOAL setting piece: Ultimate Guide To Goal Setting To Ensure 100 % Success where Executive Leadership Coach Kim-Adele shares her insights on achieving goals by asking, “What do I want?”

How Do I Achieve It?

I’ve been fortunate enough to have had a few mentors and coaches in my life who have helped me achieve some of the greatest goals I’ve set. As a result, one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves, as business leaders, coaches, or aspiring entrepreneurs, is “How do I achieve it?” Whether you’re looking to launch your own venture from scratch, become a coach or become a more successful leader at an established company, some certain behaviours and mindsets will help you reach your goal faster. So what’s stopping you?

My Secret Ambitions

I’ve had a few mentors in my life that have helped me be successful and also reach some of the best goals I set for myself.

My Training

I’ve been a little workout shy lately! Just between you, me and the blog I have a few training goals. As someone who aims to be a superfit human currently I am only doing about 1 hour a day.

What do I expect from my training?

In 2 years, I want to:

1. Climb Everest

My Physical Condition

What can I do to improve my physical condition?

Climb Everest

My Job

How can I develop my role so that it will become more satisfying? Upgrading my career can be simple by taking it one day at a time. I work on:

1. Attitude

2. Skills

What Is My Position Today?

I have a rewarding career and continued development with my business.

What Do I Want To Achieve?

How Do I Achieve It?

Home

Is it the oasis I want it to be? 

The mood of my home depends on where I am in life.

What Personal Goals Do I Have?

The difficult thing about professional goals is that they change, although having a 5-year plan is the best thing I have created in my life as it gave me something to aim for.

My External Activities

How can I find time to do sports?

What Do I Want To Achieve?

My Role In The Company…

Do I want to travel more?

How Do I get there?

What do I want to achieve? I want a promotion! How can I get it?

My Financial Position

If you want to become Millionaire this will be totally different to if you wish to make $50,000 per year.

Do I draw up budgets?

My Other Activities 

On what essential things will I spend my resources?

I take my focus off the little things. The only thing I spend money on is travel, food, and fitness.

Of course, taking the time to list what is crucial for you is key to creating the life that you want.

Sometimes you need a goal-setting framework to follow!

At the time my career pivoted, my coach Barry Joinson took the time to go through my goals and the areas of life I was unhappy with and happy about, and now I have made massive progress to the new goals I set a few years ago. Since then I have been working with Kim-Adele and another extremely experienced female corporate leader, with these two coaches in my corner and the man upstairs I feel unstoppable.

Trust yourself and find your focus

Once you are definite about what you do and you manage to understand what you do best, you will be able to focus on the things that really make you tick, the things that make you want to jump in the air and scream at the top of your lungs because you love what you are doing. My dad put it very well, he said, “what do you do really well?”

So now you need to trust yourself to carefully craft your plan. If you are really keen to get your goal-setting in place then do contact us.