Ibukun Ajayi: Does the Idea of a Bigger Picture Weigh you Down?

We are in the second month of the year and I’m sure most of us heard a lot about goal setting, visions, and all of that good stuff in January. You probably gave yourself a pass last month for at least making it into the new year, but now we’re in the second month and you’ve started to worry about your goals and plans for the year.

You look around you and on social media and you see many people who have hit the ground and running already. It’s just the second month of the year, but some people seem to have things going on for them already. They are signing deals, launching businesses, getting new jobs, expanding their existing business – the list goes on. It seems like these guys just snapped their fingers and are achieving their goals, while yours seems daunting. Now you’re determined to achieve those goals you have put down, but in doing so, you have inadvertently put yourself in a box. You have unknowingly drawn mental lines and boundaries in your head and turned into somewhat of a zombie.

Or you are the type that is overcome with worry about how you will achieve your goals? You keep looking at the enormity of it all, you have drowned yourself in a sea of the ‘bigger picture’ and you can’t see how you can make it to the shores of accomplishment.

There’s a simple trick I want to share with you: let’s say your goal is to write a certification examination, but you also have work and other responsibilities, so this goal of yours seems enormous, what do you do?

The trick is to break your goals down to smaller/daily action steps and tasks:

• Research the exam objectives and details, find out the topics that will appear on the exam.
• Gather study materials and practice tests.
• Make a study plan – how many hours in a day can you devote to studying?
• In your study plan, include days when you will take the practice tests and work on your mistakes.
• Set reminders on your phone for your study time and get an accountability partner.

This method can apply to any goal you plan to achieve. Rome, they say, wasn’t built in a day, what that means is that it took daily efforts, mounting brick by brick to build the Rome we see today. Little drops of water also make a mighty ocean, so take whatever goals you have and break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily action steps/tasks. This way, you can do at least one or two tasks daily that bring you closer to accomplishing your set goals.

Most often, when we look too far off into the future, we miss out on our day-to-day achievements and forget to count our blessings. Also, our goals seem so burdensome or beyond reach, sometimes, all we can do is live for each day, plan our day-to-day life and work things out as they come. Gradually, those daily tasks and baby steps will sum up to the bigger picture you see in your mind.