I recently moved to a new apartment and was going through a ton of my stuff I needed to organize. A lot of it was old papers that I scrambled down random to dos/ goals and such, but what was interesting is that all my ideas were little fragments of me inching towards what I am doing now in drastically different ways.
For example, at one point I decided to start this Etsy shop where I made jewelry (it wasn't ) and no one (who wasn't a friend) bought anything except for one random person in Australia who bought literally the one thing that wasn't jewelry in my shop (it was the pouch the jewelry came in). I learned from this that maybe I wasn't going to be jeweling it up as my destiny (I also didn't like working alone very much), but I did love the process of setting up the shop and marketing. Something as small as that gave me a bit better idea of where I wanted to be.
Choosing a career path has always been something I've thought about a lot and it's always really intimidated me because I literally just didn't know what I wanted to do. But now somehow I've ended up piecing together the things that make me happy and, though I have no idea how this year will look, it's one of the first times I've felt like I'm on exactly the path I want to be.
I wanted to share with you my top tips for accomplishing what you are really wanting to do with your time. As everyone has probably heard, S.M.A.R.T goals are a big thing and I think they are totally awesome in tracking and making a plan for doing something. But I think what will actually make you follow through on your goals, is making your goal something you completely believe in, care about, have always loved, and is true to yourself.
For me that's always been guitar and I got to the point of creating a business around my passion by lots and lots of tiny goals I kept trying (and sometimes failing) to do.
So here are my tips for you if you are in the stage of wanting something big for your year and just needing a little help working backward with how to get there!
1) Say no a lot
I hate saying no to things! I am a classic ENFP who has a million ideas and can potentially have no follow through if I don't create structure for myself. I've gotten a bit better at this though and realized the only way for me to do what I want is to prioritize my time and say no to other things. You also might need to say no to making other goals as well and just focus on one or two things you really want.
2) Make your work fun
I've had certain goals in the past that I didn't ever do because I think in my heart, they were never THAT important to me. Choose something big that's your real dream and matters to YOU.
3) Don't compare yourself
Other people are in completely different places than you in their guitar playing, songwriting, music career, or knowing what they want to do at all. So put on your blinders and work toward your own goal! No matter how much faster or "cooler" someone else accomplished the exact same goal that you have, you have something unique to contribute with the specific way you will accomplish your goal. Also as great as Instagram is, don't use it to measure your success. Social media is not a good place to go looking for self worth and it is not an accurate mirror of how you are doing as a guitar player. Before I started my guitar Instagram, my husband and I had a woodworking/ interior design business that was a total blast, we got a lot of clients, and we only got to 300 followers.
I hope these little tips were helpful! To really help you get to where you want to be next year with your guitar playing, I made you this 2018 Goal Planning Sheet! I've included spots for you to fill your your own playing goals and a ton of fun ideas you can use to figure out what might be a good challenge for each month!
