Is Your Why Big Enough?

Have you decided what your goal is for lockdown? Do something transformational in these precious weeks and months, and reap the benefits for years to come.

I’m sure that for many of us the lockdown period has been a chance to rethink what’s really important, and to reset our goals for the weeks and months of enforced isolation; to decide what we want to have achieved and what position we want to be in when the lockdown is over.

Maybe you’ve decided to focus on your children - keeping them entertained - using this time to build a wonderfully close relationship with them.

Maybe you’ve decided to focus on your house - doing the work on it that you've been promising to do fo-rev-er!

Maybe you’re focused on learning a new skill - you've been dying to learn Italian, or play the guitar or cook, or master ‘Fortnite'!

Maybe you're using this time to master an area of your business - your marketing strategy, your product development, or maybe even... your systems!

Whatever you've decided - good for you! But let me ask you this - 

“Why have you never focused on this before?”

If it suddenly seems like the best way to spend these precious weeks, what stopped you from getting aboard your chosen goal last month, or last year, or 3 years ago? What have the blocks been that seemed insurmountable, but somehow don't seem to be in the way now?

We all have 4 usual suspects when it comes to blocks to us getting stuff done.

The First Block we throw up is time - we don't have time, we haven't had time, there's just never enough time!

The Second Block is overwhelm or overload - there is just so much on our plate, so many things that only we can do, so much ‘busyness’, that we simply haven't been able to see the wood for the trees, prioritise effectively, and focus on our one thing.

The Third Block is the lack of a clear strategy - we've never known where to start, how to break our goal down into achievable steps and stages, how to know what ‘good ‘looks like.
And then of course there's the real biggie…

The Fourth Block and the main reason why we've probably never achieved this goal before...we haven't had a big enough Why!

Whatever this goal is that we've set ourselves for the lockdown period - it simply hasn't ever been important enough for us to set aside focused time to achieve it. There's not been a good enough reason to do it, we've not felt passionately enough about it to throw the necessary energy and focus at it, there have always been more important things to do.

Systemising your business is a good example of this. You may have decided to finally get your systems foundations in place, to crisis-proof your business, and achieve that consistency in your operation that removes you from it, day to day. That would be a great use of lockdown. It's something that you've known is important for some time, you absolutely get that it's important, but you've never quite given it the focus to get it done.

So here's the big question...what's changed?

In the current situation, time probably isn't an obstacle, and while we may occasionally feel overwhelmed and definitely upset by the whole crisis situation, we're probably not feeling overloaded with work. Given the time, we can clearly research who best to speak to or where to look, to develop our clear strategy. Which just leaves our why.

Do you feel passionately enough about your lockdown goal to see it through and get it done? 

Are you focused and energised enough about it? Is it definitely, damn well going to happen?

If not, go back and choose something with a bigger why.

Choose something that you're really passionate about, that you'll see major benefits from now and for years to come, that gets you leaping out of bed in the morning to get to work on it, something transformational.

Decide what ‘it’ is - make a plan to achieve it - work your plan until it’s done!

Then when you look back on this lockdown in the future, you'll be happy and proud and grateful for how well you used this precious time.

I hope that you and those close to you are well and that you're staying safe!

Happy Easter and thanks for reading.