Planning for your business success

Sometimes, something just happens in your life that makes you change everything. Something similar happened to business coach Amanda Warrington, who, in her forties, found herself working a job in retail and not being satisfied with it. She quit her job, went back to university, and ended up getting a degree, which completely changed her life.

What coach Amanda Warrington’s experience leaves us with is an important lesson: it is imperative for every person who wants to achieve success to understand what makes them move forward and become who they want to be.

Most people will say that confidence is the key, but that is just one part of the equation. Goal setting is another, much more important part of it, as well as working towards your purpose. The final part of the equation is working with your strengths and talents.

Here’s a practical exercise coach Warrington states you can use to achieve your goals:

Take a piece of paper and draw a straight, horizontal line. This line represents your future 3 (or 5) years journey, starting from today. Imagine if you could have the perfect life in three years’ time, what would it be?

Write the answer to that question down. Make it a goal that’s higher than what you would expect for yourself, it gives you a better chance at achieving more. Think of  something that would make you really want to wake up in the morning and say to yourself: “This is great, this is real, and this is my life!”

After you have done this, you’ll have to start thinking about how to get there. This includes everything from changes in your lifestyle to day-to-day tasks that will help you achieve your goals. Turn these into milestones you can evaluate and that might change along the way. Work on this step by step, by asking yourself “What can I do next month that will help be achieve my long term goal?”

And don’t forget: Recognise that things are going to change, even though you have a picture of your life in three years from now, it might not look like that when you actually do the work, and that’s okay.

Finally, celebrate every time you reach a milestone, because it’s the result of your hard work!