In this series, I’m taking you through the 5 Dynamical Deeds that you need to complete in order to create the life of your dreams.
Last time, we looked at Dynamical Deed #1 – destination. If you missed it, I suggest you first follow the link to read the article or to watch the video, then come back to Dynamical Deed #2.
And today, Dynamical Deed number 2 is what we’ll be exploring: Deadline.
Once you have determined what you want (aka your destination), you need to set the date by when you want to get there.
Without a deadline, your dream life will remain just that – a dream. You need a deadline to turn that dream into a reality. And what’s also important is to set some milestones that you expect to achieve on your way to that deadline. Together, the deadline and milestones create the roadmap to get you from where you are today to having created the life you’d love to be living.
So, now that you’ve created that vision for your life (aka your destination), the next step is to map out a couple of key milestones. These are the places that you would expect to be at certain points in time as you move toward you goal. For example, if you have a clearly defined vision for where you’d love your life to be in 3 years from now (your goal), you might set your initial milestones for the 12-month, 6-month, 3-month and 1-month marks so you can stay focused, motivated and on track.
Milestones help break up that big, audacious goal into manageable chunks and can keep you from feeling so overwhelmed by the gap between where you are today and where you want to be 3 years from now, that you don’t even bother starting.
You can think of milestones as mini goals. However, unlike the final deadline, milestones aren’t necessarily set in stone. The point of milestones is to have checkpoints against which you can assess your progress and course-correct, if required, to ensure you stay on track toward achieving your goal.
When you embark on a significant journey of change in your life, you don’t know, and you cannot know, every single step that you’ll need to take in order to get to that destination.
When you’re starting out, it’s important to remember that when you set milestones, you’ll be basing your expectations on a certain set of assumptions, which themselves, are based on your knowledge at that particular point in time. As you progress and learn more, you’ll probably discover that some of your assumptions weren’t correct and you may not be where you thought you would be at that point in time. You might find that you achieve your milestone earlier than you thought you would. Or you might not be as far as you thought you would be. And that’s ok. You’ll just re-set the next set of milestones using what you now know.
There are 2 things you need to remember: (1) Taking action without a clear destination and timeframe in mind will simply keep you busy but won’t necessarily get you anywhere; and (2) Not having any milestones to guide you along the way will either stop you from starting in the first place, or will see you getting off track and missing your destination.
If you are serious about creating change in your life, you need to set a target date and create a roadmap. The roadmap will give you: a start, a clearly defined destination with a date by which you want to achieve it, and a set of milestones to break up your journey into manageable chunks that will keep you on track.
And finally, just to close off Dynamical Deed #2, I’d encourage you to set a deadline that is 3-5 years from now.
Why?
Well in the wise words of Bill Gates:
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
Just imagine just how different your life could look 3 years from now.
This series will continue over next 3 publications where I’ll be going into each of the remaining Dynamical Deeds in more detail and exploring some practical ways that you can apply these to your life.
In the meantime, if you want to get a head-start on designing, experiencing and stepping into the life that you’ve only dreamed of up until now, then join me on one of my upcoming webinars where we’ll work through these concepts and much, much more.
You can find more information and register here.
