Reaching Your Dreams by Creating Goals

My goal is to be a bridge while showing people how to take the stairs.

**What the heck does that mean?!**

I listen to my clients’ desires for what they want to do with their creativity and voice. I hear what they are saying but I listen for their needs. When I identify them, I assemble a team, seek out resources, and form a connection between them and their goals so they can reach them. However, they must be willing to take the first step, like with a staircase. They must take actions and utilize what I share with them, or they won’t reach goals.

**That’s great but I’m not a client so how does you telling this help me?**

I’d love to show you! Here’s a version of the process I use with my voice discovery coaching clients to help them dream again and identify which dreams shall remain ones they see with their eyes closed and which should be ones they live out, eyes wide open, and turn into accomplishments.

How to Set Goals to Help You Reach Your Dreams

Create a dream board. This differs from a vision board in that you aren’t thinking about what you want or desire for your life as you do with vision boarding, but you are simply putting on paper the things that speak to your spirit.

Take a piece of poster board and then grab some magazines or get ready to print out images from the internet that you resonate with. (Just don’t share the board online if you don’t have permission to use the photos!) Grab whatever speaks to you as you go through the process. You can add pictures, writings, drawing, or whatever you are most comfortable with for recording your dreams – just make it visual so you can see it clearly.

You may add a picture of an island you want to visit or a quote that resonates with you. You might add a picture of future desires such as babies and families. Don’t limit yourself. One of the pictures in my first dream book was a $45M home that I wanted for my future non-profit headquarters because of the events I could host there and how beautiful the home would be for the population I desire to serve. Nothing is off limits. It’s not about reality or possibility at this step – it’s about allowing yourself to tap into that space within you that dreams big. It’s often a space that is silenced as we grow older.

Spend time with your completed dream board and consider which items resonate with you deeply. Once you finish your board, sit with it and just look at it. What feels really good? What feels scary? What feels impossible and yet exhilarating when you think of it becoming reality? There are going to be certain items that jump off the page for you as things that you desire to accomplish sooner than others. These are the things you want to put deadlines to and assign specific steps to in this process.

For the sake of this post, let’s assume your three things that jump out are:

• Travel to Portugal
• Build my dream home
• Write a book

Write down the top 3 – 7 things that resonate deeply. In the previous step you were thinking about what jumped out. In this step, write them down! Next, we are going to create goals so we can transform them from items on a dream board to accomplishments in your life.

Think of actionable steps you can take to accomplish these dreams. For each of these dreams, assign actionable steps to bring them to reality. For our example, it might look like this:

• Travel to Portugal
  • Get a passport / ensure my passport is up to date by March 1.
  • Sign up for Duolingo (or other choice of language learning software) by end of week to start learning Portuguese. (You may choose to hire a language coach or take a class at your local Recreation or Adult Education center.)
  • Spend 15 minutes a day doing Dulingo exercises to learn Portuguese.
  • Check out various websites and start compiling a list of places I’d like to visit in Portugal.
• Build my dream home
  • Start looking at plans for dream homes. Pick the top three I like by March 1.
  • Look into local architects and builders to get quotes by June 1.
  • Decide which options are must-haves and which are nice-to-haves by September 1.
  • Set aside $X per month to put toward purchase of land.
• Write a book
  • Write an outline of book by March 1.
  • Look into various aspects of publishing process by June 1.
  • Have first draft complete by September 1.
  • Receive quotes from editors, proofreaders, and graphic designers OR have query letters submitted to publishers by December 31.

Write your goals into your calendar. Now that you’ve set goals, put them into your calendar / planner so you can see them as they come up. Break them into smaller steps if you have to. Whatever works best for you at this point. The point is to keep it where you see it and ensure you are working towards completing them not just looking at them.

Tell someone about your goals. Tell someone! Go find a friend or a coach who will cheer you on as you accomplish smaller actions that lead up to turning these dreams into accomplishments!

Hold yourself accountable by checking in quarterly with your support system. The key to reaching goals is to review them as you progress through the year. Be sure to hold quarterly reviews with yourself to ensure you are making progress and revisit whether the dreams are still ones that resonate deeply with you. Perhaps you find that writing a book isn’t the right platform for you because you realize you are better at speaking and sharing your story verbally…that’s okay! Instead of a book, think about starting a podcast because your real dream was never about the book but was about sharing your message and story with the world. By breaking them into goals and checking in with yourself, you’ll better understand the actual dreams versus what you think they are when you see them based upon your current understanding. This is growth and growth is always good!

Client Testimonial

One client came to me with a desire to be an evangelist. She wanted to get to know her voice better and develop more courage for speaking and writing in a more evangelistic way. The thing is, she already was! She just didn’t realize it. That showed me the root was deeper than a calling or feeling unqualified. As we’ve worked together the past 5 months she has grown her blog, transformed her ability to dream, and taken steps to become what she once thought impossible. Here’s what she sent me a few weeks ago in response to my thank you note for being a client.

“Thank you SHELL! I know one of the best opportunities to come my way in the last decade is the opportunity to work with you. I’m not only back aware of my goals, I am taking action on them, and writing is a huge part of that. So THANK YOU.”

I was blown away. I love what I do when I am empowering people to connect with their authentic voice and when they are able to share their story and message with others confidently and responsibly. It brings me a level of satisfaction beyond anything else. But to help people dream AND put dates to those dreams… 😭😭😭😭😭🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽… It’s a dream come true for me!