Glimpse of 2024 or How to Become Aware of your Aspirations

What do you plan for 2024? What do you want to achieve? In life, business, career, communication. Who do you want to be or become?

Nowadays, we are in search of giving a meaning to our life, business, career, actions: How to be or to become happier, how to keep a good balance between work and personal life, how to get more with less effort, how to learn or read more, how to be more present and spend less time on social media, how to become a better communicator, speaker, how to become more successful.

There are plenty of resources, either offline or online: books, videos, courses, mentors, coaches, educators. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed. We feel lost and we do not know how to manage our aspirations. Are they too big or too small? Or we are not pleased with what we get.

But the answer is never simple because there is no recipe. As each of us is unique.

However, it depends only on US. And on our achievements. Because more successful we feel, happier we are. The more in line we are with ourselves, with our values, the more meaningful we feel. It might sound very simple, but in reality, it requires work.

But before aspirations, there are intentions and goals. Defining your intentions gives you the opportunity to get closer to your goals. Goals that should be broken down, achievable, well defined, well-elaborated and concrete. Sometimes, despite these well elaborated, defined, achievable goals, you can still feel overwhelmed or downfall. Here aspirations come in. Although you are not completing each step to achieving your goals, aspirations help you to keep your mindset on track.

Aspirations, what are they?!

Are they the same with intentions, goals? Comparing to intentions and goals which are more practical and more driven, aspirations come in with an extra layer of focus on ambitions.

Aspirations can be drawn up along the line of our dreams, goals or ambitions. They are more powerful as they encompass all of these. They are also helping us to stay focused, motivated and consistent on what it is relevant for us and offer us direction. In life, business, career, communication. Aspirations are our anchor to future.

We use to connect our aspirations to professional or business achievements. maybe because we related them to our ambitions. In fact, you can go to any aspect helping you to achieve your professional or business goals: ”I want to show up more confident”, ”I want to improve my communication so that I can work at global level”, etc.

It also happens to lose aspirations of our sight and goals take over. We sometimes have a clearer or a more vague idea of where we are heading. However concrete aspirations lay in our subconscious.

How to become more aware of your aspirations

First of all, there are two types of aspirations: internal and external.

While internal aspirations are connected to our personal needs, those that do not depend on other people, group or society, they are rather about your own and overall well-being. They can be about forming relationships with other people, improving the life in your community, learning, growing, expanding your worldviews, or maintaining good mental and physical health, learning a new skill or spending more time with your family.

When we are driven by internal aspirations, we are usually much more motivated to persist with our goal-oriented efforts, because that’s what we truly want, from the inside, unlinking with external aspirations, where the reward or the goal are a product of social competition, and not a person’s interest.

External aspirations are about increasing your social standing: grow your business, earn more, land a better job, show up more confident when speaking in a non native language, etc. They are usually directed towards achievements such as popularity, physical beauty, wealth, etc.

In certain cases, external aspirations can impact on your well-being. You can get quickly burn out, becoming uninterested or frustrated, demotivated or depressed. And this is because self-worth is normally based on material possession, status, influence.

It does not have to be bad, but those who focus more on internal aspirations manage to stay motivated on long term.

Both, one of them or a combination

Most of our aspirations are a combination of both. Because your job or business related aspirations involve earning more money, getting a promotion, expanding or any other instrumental activities, but they also include refining your skills, gaining new experiences, growing, new achievements.

Impact

The impact is mainly related to goal achievements. If there is any long term goal that you ant to achieve, having an aspiration keeps you on track to reach that goal.

Being a powerful organiser of our behaviour, aspirations help us gain meaning and increase our eccentric of succeeding at a certain goal we have in our lives. They are the connectors between daydreams, hopes, fantasies and real world. Besides boosting our motivation and focus, aspirations help us bring ideas to reality.

They are also determinant in deciding if a set of actions we are performing takes us further and using it as a performance indicator.

Do I have aspirations?!

Anyone has aspirations. And here are a few statements guiding you to figure out about your aspirations or if you have any:

• you strive to become the best version of yourself
• you have a growth mindset
• you recognise your weakness while you are improving
• you are rather looking at the big picture
• you sometimes catch yourself daydreaming about your goals
• you have an idea about your ideal self
• you have clear goals in your life
• you are clear about your values
• when you are working on something you are fully present and focused, but you are also thinking about next steps.

Can Aspirations be developed?

Besides general tips, some people are raised to become more ambitious and aspired, while others can set lower-level goals or even feel lost because they have not acquired or been taught to nurture such skills.

If you want to develop or improve your aspirations, here are a few tips:

• Think about your purpose in life: figure out what activities or outcomes help you feel fulfilled.
• Embrace change in your life in at least on area of your life
• You are the only measure of yourself: the only one you should compare yourself is YOU. Evaluating yourself by using others as a criterion is both counterproductive and dangerous. Find your own pace of moving forward and growing.
• Be patient: give yourself the time to discover and explore what works the best for you.
• Keep asking yourself questions: what is my ideal self? What do I dream about the most often? Which activities give me meaning?
• Enhance your Self-Awareness by being on track with your goals and following your aspirations
• Do the things you love: carefully choose your aspirations so that they spark your inspiration so that they will be much easier to manage as self-discipline and the genuine desire to allocate more of your time to your goal achievement will come naturally.
• Set goals and draft an action plan: formulate some concise, simple, and achievable goals and draft an action plan for achieving them.
• Ask for help, professional help

How do I reach my Aspirations?

Formulating your aspirations is not enough, of course. It just gives you a general direction. After being committed to them for a while, then it is the time to bring them to reality. Aspiring to something is challenging and hard, there ups and downs. Or pitfalls like formulating goals that are not yours. They may be imposed by someone else: society, family, peers, partners.

They might creat fake beliefs and action plans for turning them into reality. Things may work out great, but many times, you end up feeling like you lost something just because you listened to others and didn’t follow your true desires.

It’s better to aspire for things that are beneficial rather than harmful to you or others in your environment.

Turning aspirations into reality and working on your dreams and goals is a non-linear process that requires a lot of self-discipline, learning, embracing change, and letting yourself grow.

It can also involve frustration over your inability to succeed and the necessity for a lot of trial and error until you finally master each step in the way.

However, focusing your energy on aspirations that you intrinsically care about is more than rewarding and is a sure way to happiness.