Written by: Elisia Keown, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Our relationship with time is an important one. Nowadays, when you ask someone how they are, it’s so common to hear, “I’m so busy. There’s not enough hours in the day.” But time is just a construct we’ve created. We all get the same number of hours in the day. What we chose to do during those hours is the indicator of if we’ll reach our goals or not. Time is truly more valuable than money. You can always create more money, but we can never create more time. So, after you’ve defined the dream, the next step is looking at how you spend your days. Really looking at your week and asking simply, what actions am I taking towards my goals? Do I like how I’ve spent my time?
How to turn your dreams into reality?
Step one. Start with a brain dump into a To-Do list. Grab a blank piece of paper. Ask yourself, what are the next best steps to take to get closer to your goal? Start writing. If your brain tells you, “I don’t know,” Take a guess. Get all the steps, big and small, listed on the paper.
The To-Do list is a great starting point for clearing out your mind. The brain is made to solve problems. It’s not a repository, so getting everything out of your brain onto a To-Do list is the first step.
Step two. Getting it on your calendar. Take that list. Examine it and prioritize it. Ask, what will help get you closer to achieving that dream? Just rank it in order of the next best step. Then take that list, and one by one, get those items on your calendar. Plot it into a chunk of time. If you're not sure how long it will take, just guess. Don't get stuck in indecision. This is your prefrontal cortex at work, deciding on your future. Once you get all those items out onto a schedule, throw that list away. Get rid of it. Your calendar is now the guide.
Step three. Here comes the tricky part. When that item that you’ve scheduled comes up on your calendar: DO IT. Your primal brain will not want to. It will make up excuses. It will give you reasons not to. It may tell you you're hungry, tired, or have other things that are more important to do. You'll feel feelings of resistance and urges to do something else. That's okay. That's all normal, and nothing has gone wrong. The primal brain wants to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and be efficient. Doing new, uncomfortable things goes against all our hard wiring. Feel that urge, acknowledge it, but don’t give in to it. DO the THING anyway. That's the secret to achieving your dreams – the mind management when it has an urge to do anything but the work. So, if you want to achieve your dreams, get good at being comfortable with that discomfort, and do the uncomfortable stuff anyway.
Step four. To analyze your progress and celebrate the wins at the end of the week. This step is KEY. When you go back and ask yourself, “what went well?” and then create a little reward or a celebration for all that you accomplished - even when your brain was telling you not to - you set up a dopamine hit for doing the hard work. It creates reasons to repeat the behavior. You close that feedback loop for doing the work. When you tell your brain - good job for doing that work - look what we did! Look what we accomplished! Then next week - when you face the discomfort again, the brain is more likely to comply.
Every week, rinse and repeat these steps.
If you get stuck, this is where coaching could really benefit you. If you're facing a challenge to reach your goals, often you're spinning in your own thoughts about it, and you need someone to look objectively at those thoughts and help you separate fact from the fiction going on in your head. A good coach helps you get clarity and sort through the mind drama that keeps us stuck. As an example, I recently coached a client who was an entrepreneur. She had amazing ideas for her business and a ton of energy but struggled with execution. We worked together to get all of her ideas out of her head, onto paper, then in her schedule to execute.
Elisia Keown, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Elisia has 21 years of experience and a passion for coaching leaders, which makes her uniquely qualified to be the perfect coach for you. She's managed multiple geographically dispersed retail locations and led teams of employees numbering in the hundreds. She knows the importance of delegation, clear communication, and the power of direct feedback for development. She can help you organize yourself, your time, and your team to focus on the right priorities to drive results.
She's led Talent Acquisition teams and has global recruiting experience. She learned quickly how hiring and retaining the right talent in a business truly impacts results. She can help you decipher if you have the right team in place to support you and what to do if you don't. She's supported multiple leaders of large teams (some managing up to 30,000+ employees) with all aspects of Human Resources.
She's coached leaders to manage the performance of their teams, including having the most difficult and emotional conversations. She's helped leaders navigate through internal politics and helped them learn how to have a productive working relationship with their boss.
She can support you with all of this and more.
