Does your life feel “off the rack” ie not really yours? Is it boring, average, filled with everyone else’s agenda? There’s reason for that, and it’s all in your yearly goal. For a tailor made life that fits you like a glove, that leaves you feeling breathless and special, you need to start with a goal.
If your life isn’t thrilling you, if it isn’t making you feel like Cinderella or Naomi Campbell walking that runway at least part of the time, it’s probably to time to rethink your yearly goal.
Because it’s your yearly goal that gives your life that structure and style (your style) for the year.
Having a goal, a “couture” goal, for the year, is how you make your life an artful, authentic expression of you. And you deserve that.
Every fashion designer knows you cannot “wing it” to a runway ready collection, anymore than you can to an authentic, original life that will satiate your desire for beauty and adventure and style.
And you also can’t simply borrow pieces wholesale from past shows & designers, and expect to get something truly original and expressive of you. It may have style, but it won't be your style. It won't be couture.
So, why are so many of us “winging” our year by deciding not to even have a goal?
Worse, sometimes when we do have a goal it’s something that sounded good on paper, but that doesn’t really connect with who we are. And it can’t ever make us happy because it’s not really our dream, it’s pieces of dreams and goals we borrowed from other people.
Things our parents wanted for us, or told us to want. Or things we were taught to like by commercials and peers. Sensible things that seem like a good idea, like paying off the house. Or buying the house.
Here are the three ways that a goal can help you take back your life and design your year for you — as stylish, and as glamorous and thrilling as you want to make it.
1. Our goals set the theme for our "collection," -- our year.
The goal you pick will create the tone and structure for the next 365 days of your life. It's going to be the backbone to what unites your entire collection of moments.
It's your one chance to decide what you want the year to be structured around. And if you don’t do it, guess who will end up doing it for you?
Everyone else.
If you don’t decide what you will be focusing on daily, you will end up focusing on whatever anyone else, or life, throws your way. You won't have a collection at all. You'll have chaos.
You know how this works.
The dog is vomiting non-stop and has to go the vet. Your sister is having the in-laws over and needs your help. Your kid’s science project is due tomorrow and he just started it an hour ago.
All of these things can take over your life if you let them and run out your best intentions of living a well-lived life. Having a goal creates an intentional focus, that reigns in the chaos we all have to deal with.
Having a goal is how you design your life, and make it as couture as you want it to be by continuously keeping your attention focused on your mission, your theme, every day.
And your goal can be anything. You can make your literal style be your mission. Or finally getting your career to that six figure mark if it really connects with you. Or traveling to Italy. Or starting your own business. Or having a child this year. Or retiring.
But you only get the life you want, if you make the choice to have it & put in the daily work. Having a goal, is how you decide and work for it.
And if you feel guilty for that? If you think your life should only be about the other people, that having desires and goals is selfish? I have one simple question for you:
Would you ever force anyone in your life to take a backseat to your wishes and desires?
Would you ever let a partner, a child, your sister, or a coworker put their life on hold for you? Insist that they can't dream or set goals, because what you want comes first?
No? Then you are doing a huge disservice to yourself and others by insisting that your own life play second fiddle in exactly that same way.
Which brings us to the #2 reason you need a goal in your life:
2. Our goals force us to put ourselves center stage in our own lives
It's your runway, your life. Shouldn't it look like it? Shouldn't your "collection" of moments look like it came from you, and your essence, your inspiration, and not other people?
Yes, things will come up. Dogs and children and partner’s will sometimes come to the forefront of our lives.
But having a goal forces us to own our life, to take control of it, and not let it be subsumed by others’ wishes and demands.
You owe it to yourself, and everyone else, to be an example that every life counts. Including yours.
Our kids and the people around us do not learn from what we tell them. They learn by watching how treat ourselves. They learn from our example.
Do you really want to teach all the young people around you that being a grown-up, and particularly a woman, means giving up your dreams and life completely for those around you?
That some lives and some people’s dreams are more important, than others?
And you can still support others while doing that. You can find the balance between supporting others greatness and talent, and letting other people support yours.
We all get to have our time in the spotlight, and by rights you should be center stage in your own life more often than not.
Putting yourself first, more often than not, in your own life, is the only way to create a life worth living. A life that looks like it's couture.
Designers know this . Imagine Donatella Versace creating a runway collection by asking everyone else around them what they wanted first?
Perhaps she decides to make things that will make her seamstresses and the designers working under her happy? And then maybe she asks the models what do they want to wear? And perhaps she ask Anna Wintour would be best for the magazine?
It wouldn't be much of a cohesive collection. My guess is it wouldn't be much of a collection at all.
Too often, this is what is happening to our lives when we don't have a goal. We end up simply trying to make other people's lives easier, happier, and smoother, at the expense of our own.
Only a goal for the year can help us keep our desires , our excitement and longing, our design for our lives to the front and center of our mind.
Which brings us to the final reason why you need a goal to create the life you love:
3. Goals create forward momentum & that's how we change our lives
Choosing a goal and pursuing it over a year will change you, even if you don’t get it.
If you show up every day for 365 days and put your goal front and center… even if you fail some days, and get a little traction others, and lose the thread this day only to come back tomorrow to focus on it again, you will be changed by that process.
Your life will change.
If you want to progress in your life and learn how to make things happen, if you want a life that feels like it’s yours, that has style and choice in it, then a goal is how you make that happen.
You chose a goal that is truly you, that has your desires and essence in it, and you end going on a daily adventure that will eventually, over time, transform you.
And it should be said, it only needs to be an adventure to you. You don’t need to impress anyone else. Your life, gets to be lived in your kind of style.
Your brand of couture is as uniquely yours, as it is any designers.
Designers only get more shows ( and more resources ) by putting out their collections. If they don't put out a collection, they don't go any farther then they are. And the same is true for us.
If you don't pick a goal, and create a collection of moments making that goal happen over the next 365 days, you won't get any farther either.
If you don’t change and transform by overcoming obstacles and determining your own way in life, life has a funny way of transforming you for you, often through loss and tragedy.
Your yearly goal is how you design that life. It’s your needle and thread. Use it wisely, and you’ll end up with a tailor-made life.
And with that I'm off. I will see you next week, but I really hope that helped you to play more with picking a goal that will give style to your life. Whatever "style" means to you.
Thank you for reading I'm Desirée Sommer, a life coach for women looking to take their lives from "off-the-rack" and ready-made to Couture -- Stylish, fun, and tailor made for them!
If you’d like more help, I’m here for it!
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