Create a Road Map to Your Goals

Why can’t I just be there already?!

This is a question I’ve asked myself too many times in working towards my goals.?If you know me, you’ll know that I set some pretty epic and “did I really just say I would do that?”?kind of goals.?When I’m at the beginning of trying to figure out what I’m going to do to get to that seemingly impossible goal, it can feel extremely intimidating. ?

First things first…I have to constantly remind myself that the “how” is not mine.?I have no control over how exactly I reach my goal.?I only have control over what steps I take to get there.?This can seem a little off putting if this is the first time you hear this concept.?“What do you mean I don’t have control over how I reach my goals?!” ?

If we narrow ourselves down to only one path to get to our end goal, we close ourselves off to the endless possibilities and roads that could lead to the same or better end result.?In the process of reaching a goal, there is an element of faith.?Faith that God-Universe (whatever higher power you believe in) has your back and that you are co-creating your reality along side Them.?Each party having a hand in getting you to your end goal.?The “how” is for God-Universe to handle and the “what” is for you to execute.?Keeping this in mind as you move forward towards your goal helps you let go of the feeling of “bigness” and “impossibility”.?ANYTHING is possible!

So now that we clearly understand our role and what we’re responsible for, let’s get into the “what”.?You’ve set this epic goal and now what??

Now, here comes the fun part - reverse engineering your way to your goal.?This also may seem little intimidating, but as your new chemical engineer BFF, I’ve got you!?This is what I was trained to do in my degree & in my job and it’s honestly what I do best so let’s break it down.

Let’s think of your goal as one big puzzle with the end goal of seeing that cute little image of a puppy playing in a field of grass and trees that you absolutely couldn’t live without when you saw it online.?You pressed “Buy Now” with zero buyers remorse and started the patient/not-so-patient waiting game for that 2 day shipping.?*Finally*, the day has come and you see that mail person walk to your front door on your doorbell camera and you impatiently wait until they drop the goods at the door.?You grab that package before the mail person can even get back in their vehicle, open that bad boy up, and dump out the puzzle pieces onto your dining room table.?After 5 minutes of looking at seemingly the same blades of grass on different shaped pieces, you wonder why in the world did you even buy this thing in the first place.

Reaching big goals without a solid strategy can feel a lot like this.?You set this big goal, take a stab at trying to reach it, and feel completely deflated after your first attempts don’t get you to where you think you should be.

Instead of getting frustrated with your adorable puppy puzzle, you develop a plan to reach your end goal.?You separate out the edges from the rest of the pieces.?You then further subdivide the inner pieces into ones that are part of the puppy, the trees, and the grass.?Before you build out the inner pieces, you put the edge pieces together while looking at the picture on the box for reference and you nail it! The edges are complete!?You get up and do a little celebration dance around the table because you’ve made some serious progress. ?

Now it's time for stage 2: constructing the interior pieces.?You start with the puppy since that’s the one with the least amount of pieces and will get you to another milestone quicker than the other options, which will help you create momentum going into the trees and grass pieces.?And oh my goodness…there’s that adorable little puppy you’ve been waiting for! You do another round of dance dance celebration around the table.

Here comes the dreaded trees & grass part.?You sit for a few minutes just staring at the remaining pieces, not quite sure where to start.?Then you see a pattern in the tree & grass pieces.?Some pieces are brighter than others depending on where they are in the puzzle based on if they’re in the sunlight or in the shadows.?So you further subdivide the tree and grass pieces into sunlight trees, shadow trees, sunlight grass, and shadow grass.?You slowly chip away at constructing your first tree and the rest seemingly falls into place.?Before you know it, you’ve got the whole puzzle put together!?Time for an epic dance celebration, music & all! You did it!!

I know you didn’t start reading this thinking you’d end up reading about a cute puppy so let's bring it back to you and your epic goal. ?

First, I want you to close your eyes a visualize your end goal.?I don’t want you to just see it though.?I want you to see it, think it, live it, and most importantly feel it.?What does achieving this goal feel like to you??I want you to take all thoughts about “how” you’re going to achieve it and have faith and trust that God-Universe has you back and will take care of that for you.?Imagine it surrounded in a bubble and watch it float away.?I want you to now see the pieces left in front of you.?These are the “whats” that you have the responsibility to take care of and to execute.?Open your eyes and let’s do this!

Now, I want you to break your goal down to its core.?What are your edges??What pieces of your puzzle do you need to do first to create the foundation for you to reach your end game??Write these down.

Look at each of your edges and ask yourself “what do you need to do to create these foundations?”.?For each edge, write down the things you need.?These are your interior puzzle pieces.

You can keep breaking down each interior piece further and further until you get an actionable step by step road map to reach your ultimate goal.

So you see, reverse engineering your goals is a lot like putting together that cute puppy puzzle.?You know what your end goal is and you breakdown the steps you know you need to get there.?Now sometimes, you’ll need to re-think the steps once you’re further along in the journey, but you’ve already got momentum and previous progress to give you that encouragement to get over the roadblocks you run into along your way.

Starting to strategize reaching your epic goal can be the scariest & hardest part of the whole goal reaching thing so I’ve put together a kick start worksheet for you to customize to help you lay that foundation and roadmap to bring even your most epic of goals into reality.

Cheers to your goal reaching strategies! ?? You got this!

Strategically,

Phallyn