Merry Belated Christmas pumpkins...or should I say snowflakes? I hope you had a jolly good one.
Now, the reason you haven't heard from me in the past two weeks, is because I've been so busy wallowing in self pity. You see, I created my blog on the school computers because I don't have a personal computer and I've been feeling sad about the fact that I don't have one, instead of using what I had. What I want to teach you guys today is the key to the rest of your lives. I'm going to teach you something I just learned. I'm going to teach you, in 4 simple steps, how to use what you have, to get what you want. Let's get into it. Step 1: Identify what you want
You need to set your ultimate goal. You need to determine what it is that you really want out of life at this very moment. In my case, it's a bag of banana chips and to become 'Blogger Of The Year' by the time I'm 25. For this post, we're going to focus on the latter. My ultimate goal at the moment is to become blogger of the year in 8 years. Notice how much time I'm giving myself. I gave myself 8 years to grow my blog, 8 years to improve my content, 8 years to improve my writing, 8 years to achieve my goal. Now it's time to set your goal. In setting your goal, always remember to make your goals S.M.A.R.T Specific - Your ultimate goal needs to be specific. You should be able to use it as a yard stick to measure your progress. Look at my goal for example.'To Become Blogger of The Year by the time I'm 25' I gave myself a specific year I wanted to achieve my goal. I'm direct with what I want to achieve and I allow my self flexibility. By saying 'by the time' I gave myself the chance to achieve my goal before the time stated, instead of boxing myself in and saying 'When'. That just makes it look as if it has to happen in that year and no other time. Measurable - your goal should be able to be used as a yard stick as I said before. You should be able to look at your current situation and determine how far you are from your goal. If I had said ' To be a successful blogger by the time I'm 25' I would have been too vague and could not use it as a measuring stick, because what do I define as success? Kim Kardashian could repost a blog post of mine tomorrow. I could get a billion views next week, but where does it end? When will I look at my current position and say ' I'm almost there"? Attainable - When setting your goal it must be something you know you can achieve. Saying you want to be a billionaire by the time you're 19 is Specific, it's measurable yes, but let's be real. The only way I'm achieving this goal is if I'm going to own a Brothel. When setting your goals, make sure it's something you know you can achieve with just a little bit or a lot more work Realistic - Realistic and Attainable kind of go hand in hand. Having a realistic goal simply means your goal should be something that's humanly possible. Saying you want to meet a mermaid in the year 2025 is by no means realistic, simply because mermaids just don't exist ( unicorns do though and no one can tell me different).
Timely - Give yourself time to achieve your goal. In my ultimate goal, I gave myself 8 years to achieve it. Compare that, to if I had given my self 2 years. That means I would have 2 years to improve my blogging and out-blog popular bloggers who's been at it for over 5 years. That just sounds ridiculous. When setting your goals ensure that you're giving yourself adequate time to achieve what you want to achieve.
Step 2: Evaluate what you want
Now that you know what you want,it's time to determine what it will take to get what you want. In my case, to put it vaguely, it will take lots of networking, hours of blogging, many sleepless nights, by creating amazing content and basically alot of hard work and dedication. You need to determine what it will take you to get what you want. You can do so by asking yourself these three questions: 1)Why do you want to achieve this goal?
In my case its because blogging is something I'm passionate about. It's something I enjoy doing. I love giving people advice and I want to change lives. I want to inspire people. It is my hope that in the next 8 years, I'll be able to inspire so many people, and touch so many lives that I will be recognized for it 2) What/ Who inspired you to set this goal?
I find that when I establish what my inspiration was, whenever I get discouraged or distracted I can look back at that inspiration and be inspired again. My inspiration for those goals was Marianna Hewitt owner of Life With Me. She's totally amazing and skinny inspiring. 3)How badly do you want to achieve this goal?
This to me is the ultimate question. How badly do you really want this goal? How much effort are you willing to put into this goal? How much are you willing to sacrifice? Saying you want to achieve something is good but are you really willing to put in the work necessary to get it? Does it consume your every waking thought? Do you dream about it? How badly do you need to achieve this goal? How hard are you willing to go to get it? If you're not willing to fail a hundred times so that you can achieve your goal once then you don't really want to achieve your goal now do you? Step 3: Identify what you have
Now that you're positive on what you want, it's time you identify the tools you have to help you achieve what you want. This was my biggest problem. I spent so much time saying I wanted a computer or that I wanted a new phone, that I didnt realize I was completely ignoring what I had. So yes, a phone would be nice, so would a camera but guess what? I don't have them. Am I going to sit down and just not achieve my goal because of one minor inconvenience. I think not. On a serious note, many of us do that in our daily lives. We sit and say what,we want, we dream about what we don't have an completely neglect what we do have. We use or challenges as excuses rather than stepping stones. What I do have is an android with internet access, a horde of ideas and lots of determination, and these are what I'll use to get what I want. Step 4: Use what you have to get what you want
Now that we've identified what we have, and I'm going to just recap mine A smart phone Internet access Ideas Determination We're going to use these things to get what we want. How will I use them? Well for starters I can use my phone to blog. It has a working keyboard and autocorrect; that's really all you need to write a blog post. I can use my access to Internet to put more things out there, to network, to work on collabs and do a horde of other things. Now we've come to the two that I think matter the most. My ideas and my determination. Now imagine if I had a Macbook Pro, an iPhone X and a Canon EOS 5D, but no ideas. All those equipments would just be useless. So although I don't have those equipments, my ideas are really, what I failed to realize, what matter. The fact that I can come up with a blog post is what will get me to my ultimate goal. That, coupled with my determination to blog, despite my circumstances I think are what will make me succeed. Not my equipments. Just my willpower.
That, snowflakes is how to use what you have to get what you want.Comment down below and let me know what your goal(s) are/is and how you plan to achieving them. Also, don't forget to subscribe! Love ya 💙