Dreams to Reality Podcast: The First/Next Step Towards Your Big Dream

Whether you are right at the beginning or well on your way to achieving your big dream, it is so much easier to move towards your dream ONE step at a time. Identify the next baby step, the next small step…and the next and the next and the next. Don’t get distracted by the bigness of your dream, just focus on taking one step, and another, and another.

To listen to this week’s podcast, click here: The First or Next Step

Homework:
Answer this question: What is the next step to take me towards my big dream? When you’ve answered the question, DO the action! And repeat.

You can also subscribe to this podcast on itunes here.

May all your dreams become reality.

Love

Donna.x

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OnTheBeach – Time to Make a Difference

I find this time of year really interesting when it comes to people’s goals/intentions/plans for their lives. Oh, it’s December, no point starting a healthy eating plan now. Oh, it’s nearly Christmas, I can’t give up smoking now. I’ll start 2012 with a resolution to drink less/save more/find a new job/date more/connect with my intuition/design my life/start a business/take up a new hobby/have some more fun.

Erm. Can I just point out that there are still 45 days in 2011?! Why wait? Why put it off until January – or maybe February because January’s miserable enough without doing something difficult…or March because February’s a short month…or even April because March is busy…and the excuses go on until another year has passed, it’s next November and you’re thinking ‘hey, no point starting now, I’ll start 2013 with a resolution to drink less/save more/find a new job/date more/connect with my intuition/design my life/start a business/take up a new hobby/have some more fun.

You think I am exagerating? Can you think of a goal/intention/plan that you’ve been meaning to get into for YEARS? That’s now getting put off AGAIN until next year? Thought so. I actually find that this is a GREAT time of year to take some real action on my goals. One year I packed my job in at the end of November, the year before I gave up smoking on the 11th December, the previous year I paid off my debts in December. And the wonderful thing about it is that you can start the New Year with a spring in your step, already proud that you’ve made a start. And let’s face it, if you can make progress to make your life FABULOUS around Christmas, with all its distractions and busy-ness, you can do it ANYTIME!

I know what you’re thinking…I’m trying to ruin the festive season for you by making you go on a diet of water and celery or work yourself into the ground and miss out on Christmas parties. No. Your action does not have to be something massive and time-consuming to be impactful. For example, I am on a weight-loss programme, and my goal for December is to lose 2 pounds despite Christmas – if I do this, I will be at my goal weight at the beginning of January! And it should be relatively easy – I shall still eat, drink and be merry, but I will also have ‘good days’ and keep up the exercise (so I’ll probably keep up the daily practice of dancing which will not exactly be a hardship!)

The trick is to make your action EASY – just make progress on your most important goals and desires. Imagine if you took just a small step towards what you want EVERY DAY until the end of the year. How much progress do you think you could make? How would it feel to start next year knowing that you are already well on the way to achieving one of your dreams? Imagine if you worked on the novel you’ve always write for half an hour every day, by the end of the year, you’d have done 22 and a half hours of writing. A lot of progress can be made in ‘just’ 45 days of action…so how are you going to end the year? With a whimper? Or with time to make a difference to your life?

And if you want help to end the year with a flourish, see this week’s special offer!

- Something to Play With -

Use this exercise to help you end the year on a high note of action and achievement:
- Pick the one goal/intention/plan that will make the most difference to your life.
- What can you do every day to make progress on this goal?
- Tell someone what you’re planning to do – if you’re feeling really brave, e-mail me, I’ll put your action plan in next week’s newsletter and we’ll all encourage you!
- DO IT – make a difference to 2012.
Want to share your thoughts on this article? Please leave a comment below.

- Beach Card of the week -

“Connection to the source – keep your connection to the creative energy of all there is, and use it as rocket fuel! You know you’re connected when you feel joyous, giggly-happy, full of vibrant energy and life – what makes you feel this way? And make sure you do it often to get your connection to the source energy flowing.” For a daily ‘beach card’, join us on Facebook.

Love

Donna.x

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OnTheBeach – Taking Inspired Action

When you are working towards a goal (say, having a life full of purpose, passion and joy for example!), what sort of action do you take? Do you take the next logical step, even when every fibre of your being is screaming at you to do something illogical and seemingly unrelated? Or do you follow your inspiration? Taking your whims and fleeting random thoughts as instructions to do something utterly fabulous? For most of us, it is the former. The logical steps. The ‘next’ steps. And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that! Next steps will get you there…

But there are shortcuts to where we want to go. Little cut-throughs that we tend to ignore because we can’t see where they go. Have you ever seen one of these when out for a walk? A path that leads…somewhere. But because you can’t see where it goes, you stay with the path you’re on. I have never been good at ‘staying on the beaten track’. Whenever I see a path that goes…somewhere, or a road I’ve never been down, or a door I’ve never opened, I want to go that way and find out what’s down there. In the car, this has usually meant one of two things – I either get lost, or I find a shortcut. And I like a shortcut, a rat run, a different (sometimes quicker, sometimes easier) way of getting from A to B. I also don’t mind being lost. After all, I’ve had plenty of practice!

And I am the same in life. I listen to my intuitive nudges, my inspiration, the little whispers that tell me to do something seemingly unrelated to what I’m working on. And sometimes, I admit, I do get a bit lost or distracted. But many times that little inspiration takes me somewhere utterly fabulous. By following the inspired actions, I have found resources, people and fun stuff that I would never have seen if I’d stayed on the beaten path. And the more I take inspired action, the more I recognise the inspiration, the more I see the little lightbulb go on, and the more I move forward into the fabulous life I am creating.

Inspired action is the whisper from the universe to help you get what you want from life, but sometimes it looks like a distraction. Take the case of Chris, who was looking for a job, and got a nagging thought to call an old friend who just happened to have started a new company and needed staff. Coincidence? No, inspiration. The universe is always trying to help us along, but we think we know better and just ignore those whispers. And sure, sometimes the whispers seem to lead nowhere…but I am a big believer that no inspired action is EVER wasted. Sometimes it is just what you need in that moment. The other day I got a whisper to go to a local reservoir to watch the sun set. It was just what my soul needed, irrespective of what I was ‘working on’ right then.

How do you recognise inspired action? Notice that I said ‘recognise’ – this is something that is already there within you, whispering. It is not action that ‘seems like a good idea’. It is not action that you ‘thought’ would be a logical next step. It is not action that always makes sense! In fact, sometimes it is difficuld to explain to someone else why it is something you need to do! It is inspired, coming from your intuition, sometimes enormously illogical, but you know it’s ‘right’. I know you have experienced this before, we all have. And we all have the ability to tap into this inspiration more and more – unfortunately many of us are too used to going down the logical path. But logic was only invented to justify our intuitive decisions!!! So listen to your inspirations…and TAKE ACTION!

Love

Donna.x

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Nothing Holding You Back

What is holding you back from having a joyous life? What is holding you back from falling in love with life? What is holding you back from doing what you want to do? You may have answered ‘money’, ‘time’, ‘not knowing how or what to do’, maybe it is a person or people, the government, that you are not confident enough, that you have not got the knowledge or the skill or the motivation or the right shoes (!). What is it that holds you back in your life? Identify it all…

Now imagine that there is NOTHING holding you back. There is nothing in your way. You have all the resources, time, intelligence, creativity, support, ideas, motivation, energy that you need to enjoy your life, to fall in love with your life, to do whatever you want to do. Just imagine it for a moment. What would that be like? How would that change things for you? What could you do if there was nothing holding you back? What first step would you take? Why not take that first step right now?

Move towards enjoying your life, falling in love with your life, doing what you want to do…even though there are things holding you back, move forward anyway. Many of the things holding you back will just fall away under the glow of your inspiration and determination…and those that don’t will become more of an inconvenience than a brake on your dreams. Move forward anyway. Do it now, as if there is nothing holding you back. Leave a comment and tell me what you’d do if nothing were holding you back…and then go do it!

Love

Donna.xxxx

PS Put a comment below to tell me what it is that’s holding you back and in a future blog, I’ll address that particular thing more specifically. Trust me, you won’t be alone in whatever it is you feel is holding you back!

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Thinking Big, Dreaming Big

Here’s the last post from the Wire blog:

So, Carrie asked me to do a blog post for you guys on “Thinking Big” and “Keeping Moving Towards Your Big Dreams”. These two subjects are really close to my heart as they are the reason I am a coach! One of my favourite things in the world is getting to the centre of what drives people, what they are passionate about, what they love and where they want to go…and then helping them to get there. Delightful.

So let’s start with thinking big. You may have heard of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely), and although this is sensible and logical, it is also BORING! When I take my big ideas for my business and run them through this method of goal setting, I lose most of the OOMPH behind them. Business plans have the same effect. They take the inspiration out of your ideas and make them tedious. Thinking big won’t always get you to be Mistress of the Universe, but thinking small DEFINITELY won’t, and being realilstic, logical, sensible cuts your ‘big ideas’ down to a size that has no juice left for you! Bleurgh.

So let’s talk about SMILE goals instead (I just made this up by the way!) – does your vision for your business make you Smile? Does it have a touch of Magic about it? Is it Inspiring to you? Do you have Lots of enthusiasm for this? Does it give you Energy? If yes, Woohoo! Go get em Tiger! If not, what is your biggest vision for your business? To find that big vision, try these exercises:

Imagine that you have a time machine and you can go 5 years into the future – everything has gone better than you ever expected…what has happened in your business?

Sandy Grason of www.sandygrason.com suggests you set a timer and try the writing prompt “Your Perfect Day” – what would that be like? What would your perfect business day look like?

What is the best you can imagine for your business and your life? Don’t worry about the ‘how’ for a moment, just allow yourself to dream big.

Spend a bit of time thinking about what your big vision would be. Most of us only allow ourselves to think about modest goals…and most of us are capable of achieving far greater. Many people believe that if they don’t have big dreams, they can’t be disappointed. Unfortunately, when we keep ourselves small that disappoints us more than trying and failing ever could. And the joy is in the journey – it really is. If you have a big dream, a big vision, a big idea, you will grow and learn and develop so much you won’t be able to recognise yourself! Whether you reach that big goal or not. I was once told to set the goal of being a millionaire. Not for the money, but for what I’d learn along the way.

Get a vision that excites you! Get a vision that delights you…in fact, I say ‘get’…but you already have that big vision inside you. Let it out. You wouldn’t have it if you couldn’t do it. Ok, it is possible that you may not reach your ‘big vision’…but you just might! And you may well get a lot further than if you stay safe, stay small and stay sensible, realistic, timely, blah! And maybe the reason you don’t reach that big vision is because along the way the big vision changes – mine has changed beyond recognition in the last 5 years. I’m glad I never got my 2005 version ‘big vision’ because it sucked! My 2010 big vision however, ROCKS!

Now, once you’ve got your ‘big vision’, how do you achieve it? There are 3 vital parts to achieving a big goal: 1. Be flexible 2. Keep a sense of humour and 3. Keep moving. The first two are important – I can guarantee that there will be days you think you’re never going to get there, days when things go horribly wrong, days when every door seems to have shut in your face, days when you doubt yourself, days when you wonder how the beep you’re going to do this. On those days, you will need flexibility and a sense of humour!

Clients often feel there is something wrong with them or their big vision because it’s not as easy as they thought it would be. Unfortunately in my experience it never is “easy”! When we see people who have achieved great things, we almost always gloss over the fact that they have worked for 20 years to get where they are, or the sacrifices they had to make to get where they are, or the days they thought they couldn’t do it. And let me tell you that everyone who has achieved something great had doubts, bad days, crises of confidence and moments (sometimes thousands of them!) of failure. It is not ‘just you’.

The difference between those who get there and those who don’t is the 3rd vital part. Keep moving. Step by step by step by step by step by step. Breaking your next move down into baby steps and moving. For example, creating a website might be a next move…but it is more than one baby step!!!! To break it down, you might say step 1 is brainstorming what you want your website to be – a brochure, a lead-catcher, a force to be reckoned with? Step 2 might be writing the copy for the home page. Step 3 might be deciding on the names for the other pages. Steps 4-12 might be creating the copy for those pages. Step 13 might be to find a web designer (or this might be step 1, depending on what feels right to you).

50 steps later, you have a website. And you’re ready to take the next step. Most people get stuck because they try to take those 50 steps in one stride, then fall flat on their face. An absurd and unrealistic undertaking! This is one of my achilles’ heels (I have many!) – I try to get way ahead of myself, and then just end up falling behind. But when I remember to decide the next baby step and do that, then decide the next baby step and do that, I make progress. I stay flexible, I keep my sense of humour…and every now and again I remind myself of that vision that makes me smile, has a touch of magic, inspires me, gives me lots of enthusiasm and energy – and that big vision pulls me forward into the next steps.

You cannot climb a mountain in 2 leaps – it takes thousands of small steps. This may be disappointing to the impatient among you (like me!) but actually it should be encouraging – you keep putting those small steps together, keep flexible, keep a sense of humour and you will conquer that mountain!

Love

Donna.x
With thanks to Carrie of the Blonde Marketing Goddess and Wire for featuring me! xx

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The Source of Disatisfaction

I received this in a newsletter from Chris Guillebeau of the art of non-conformity “Dissatisfaction comes about from wanting something different but not being willing to take action toward achieving it.” Or as my teacher, Carole Dore, puts it “if you’re are paying attention to the sprouts (the ideas, the signs, the creative urges) and taking action, you won’t have time to wonder where your desires are”. So does this resonate with you?

When you are feeling dissatisfied, what do you do? Do you get sad, bemoan your ‘bad luck’, feel the frustration, wonder why you bother, sulk? Or do you use your dissatisfaction to remind you what you want, focus on it and take action? Which do you think will get you further toward the life you want?

When you are feeling frustrated, dissatisfied, disappointed and fed up in general with life, it is easy to get taken over by that frustration, especially if you are surrounded by other people who are doing the same thing. But it is more helpful to change the way you deal with that dissatisfaction – use it as a spur to move you forward, not keep you stuck or even send you backwards. How? Simple: as soon as you notice that you are wanting something ‘different’, decide what it is you want; pay attention to the ideas that come to you and take action; repeat.

Simple, not always easy, but simple. And if you do it, the chances of you getting what you want are 1000x higher. You will also lose the feeling of dissatisfaction because you are working towards what you want. So what is it that you want, and what are you going to do today to move a step closer to it? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Love

Donna.x

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The Last Chance Saloon

Right, folks, it’s your last chance! To get 20% off all coaching with me, you need to book and pay by the end of January. (Well, if you just send me an e-mail saying “please let me in, I’m wearing the right shoes and everything”, that will do!). Are you ready to start making a difference in your life right now? Are you ready to start living the life you were born for? Are you ready to put a toe out of your comfort zone? If so, e-mail me NOW at donna at donnaonthebeach dot co dot uk or use the contact page to contact me.

For more details about this special offer, including specific prices and whatnot, click here.

I am SO looking forward to working with you!

Love

Donna.x

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Just Take the First Step

I am supposed to be doing my tax return today – it’s 20 past 2 and I still haven’t started! Now I could use this as a stick to beat myself up about procrastinating and being rubbish (this should have been done months ago, blah, blah, blah) but really, what’s the point in that? Instead I’ve been looking at my reluctance with curiosity.

What’s stopping me? It’s not a difficult taks – all the scut work has been done, it’s just a matter of checking figures, and entering them in the tax website. Easy. So what’s stopping me? Simply that I don’t know where the file is! Seriously. That one little mini thing is the ‘obstacle’. I laughed aloud when I realised this, because finding the file was pretty easy (I just looked to my right, and there it was).

Now I’m good to go, and there’s no more obstacle (well, except finishing this!). You know, sometimes it is really that easy. It’s not that we’re lazy, or ‘bad’, or wrong, or that we need a good boot up the arse. We just need to find the file. So next time you have something you appear to be putting off, ask yourself what is the first step and do that. Once you’re moving, it’s easier to stay moving (basic law of physics!) and before you know it, that first step, next step approach will have you finished!

Right, I’m off to do my tax return…and I must think of a reward for myself for doing it (finally – lol!) – any ideas?

Love

Donna.x

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