How many of you have ever been sitting in an annual review or a job interview and been asked “what is your 5-, 10-, or 20-year plan” or “what goals do you have for this position/job”? My usual inner response to those questions is AAAAAAACK! I have no clue! Then I go into mental panic mode and pray for the floor to swallow me up. But, why are those questions so terrifying for some (ME!) and not for others? My best guess is, those “others” actually have a plan. Just going out on a limb there … *wink*

When I made the decision to get back into blogging and then further expanded on that idea with the addition of a web-shop, I realized that, in order for it to really come into being, I needed a plan. Genius right? Yeah, yeah…I hear you chuckling… But, it’s true. In order to realize your goals, you need to have some sort of realistic plan for getting there.

Today, I’m going to share how I laid out my goal for this blog with a little bit of a cherry twist.

Step 1: Visit the cherry orchard

Start with a blank notebook or piece of paper. Anytime I begin a new project I begin with a fresh, clean page and just start writing down ideas. That’s step one. Call it freeform thinking, brainstorming, mind dumping, whatever. Get your thoughts, hopes, wishes and dreams out of your head and onto the paper. Don’t filter, organize, categorize, or interrupt your thought flow. Just write. Words, sentences, half-formed ideas, whatever comes to mind. Once you do that, you can think more clearly and start selecting the ideas that really resonate with you which, by the way, is step two. If you really let yourself brainstorm, without filtering, erasing, sorting or organizing your thoughts , you will discover with delight the stuff that you are passionate about. Try it! I think you will be surprised at where your dreams really land. Journaling is another way to clear your head, but that, my friends, is a topic for another day.

My once blank page was a mess once I finished this part. I had MANY lofty ideas for content, shop items. projects I wanted to share, topics I wanted to explore and on and on and on. It was a little (okay a LOT) overwhelming to be honest. Praise the Lord for step two!

Step 2: Pick the cherries

Now that you have all your thoughts on paper, you can look a them with a fresh perspective, and you can pick the cherries. The words and themes that pop out at you because they’re bright and perfect for what you really want to do.

You’ll likely have more than one thing that jumps out at you but this is where a little organizational skill comes in handy. Take your eclectic, wonderful list of words and thoughts and start grouping them into a handful of four or five categories. When you are done, you will be able to see where you have overlap or repeating ideas. This is a good thing! It means you’re thinking about that stuff more than the others.

For this blog, I discovered I wanted a fresh and feminine look and feel, and since I was leaping out into the world (sharing my face and everything!), I wanted quality photos. (enter my photographer friend, Tina Vega) I also wanted my content to be real, true to my shiny new brand and to my roots. My categories were: DESIGN, BRAND & CONTENT.

Step 3: Weed out the Thistles

Now, I’m not going to say all of your ideas, dreams and goals aren’t good. Not at all. They just might not be all that helpful in getting you to your ultimate goal for this exercise. Maybe they belong with another goal that you will pursue another time, so you want to pull them out of your list and focus on what really resonates with you.

I had a LOT of thistles in my list. Whoo boy, did I have thistles. This is, unfortunately, how my mind works. Lots of ideas, little to no real time to make them reality. I try, but let me tell you, it’s exhausting! So, we weed.

Take a good, hard look at your tidy list of four or five categories, grab a highlighter and mark the words that literally jump off the page at you as outliers. Sing the “which of these things is not like the others” song if it helps. You want to call them out so you can pick them out of your basket of cherries. There could be a lot of them, or maybe only a few. If you only find a few, you may want to shake your basket so to speak and repeat the process. Trust me. No goal can be accomplished (without a lot of angst), if you spend all your time stomping thistles. Better to pull them out of your basket at the beginning and save some heartache. When you are done, you want to have 3 main ideas to really focus in on. If you have a few ideas that you really like but they don’t make the top 3, save them. You can come back to them later.

Step 4: Assemble the ingredients

Any good baker will tell you to assemble your ingredients before you begin. That is exactly what you have done to this point. You’ve now got three viable ideas that you can use to make that goal (or pie) a reality. Now, let’s put them in some sort of order. Take your top 3 ideas and rank them in order of passion. I’m betting that the ideas you’ve landed on are all things that you already feel enthusiastic about, have some experience in, or are eager to try. When you’ve finished this part, you will have defined for yourself your top three goals. Congratulations!

My top three turned out to be a bit surprising actually. I recently began making candles with my best friend and (as is typical of me) fell headlong into the fun of experimenting with different scent combinations. Of course the girl time was a huge bonus too! A year ago, my goals for this site included things that I’ve done for years and absolutely loved. The surprising part is that, at least for now, they are not included in the mix.

Step 5: Set the timer

So, now you have your goals all queued up in order of importance, (or in keeping with our pie theme), your pies are ready to go into the oven. You need to set the timer! Take a look at those goals and assign a time frame to each one. Ask yourself, is this a 1-year goal? Five years? Ten? Or is it something I want to finish this month or this week? Whatever your time frame might be, add it to the goal. Yes, I mean write it down. Write something like: I will realize this goal in { X days, weeks, months, years }. Just writing it down will go a long way towards helping you to actually follow through and do what you have declared as your goal.

If you have a long-term goal, ie. something longer than a month, make a note on your calendar every few weeks to check the crust. Hopefully it’s on its way to becoming golden brown and not burnt from neglect, but don’t worry if you aren’t always making great strides. Sometimes life gets in the way of things, so we adjust as needed and turn the heat down a little until we’re ready to go again.

As I mentioned in my first post, when it came to actually launching this site, I was stuck for several months. I may have still had a few thistles in my basket true, but for whatever reason, I held off hitting that scary PUBLISH button. That’s the nature of many goals I think. There will always be fits and starts, bursts of enthusiasm, and times where life gets messy and you have to step back and regroup, but if you persist the reward is incredible. You just need to get out that blank notebook and begin.

Remember…it’s YOUR pie (I mean goal)

I’ll leave you with this one final thought that, I sincerely hope, makes this easier. Whatever goal you set for yourself, always remember that you chose it from a big, long, messy list. You declared it and you set the timer. It’s yours to do whatever you want with, and I hope that when you take it out of the oven, it’s as delicious as you hoped it would be. Enjoy it!