PREPPING POWER Photo by volodymyr-hryshchenko on Unsplash
BY MELANIE ROBITAILLE, SR. STAFF WRITER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Whether it’s gearing up for a New Year with resolutions, setting SMART goals, or simply setting the coffee maker the night before, people everywhere understand there’s power in preparation. For some it looks like a color-coded and labeled world of organization that brings utter satisfaction and focus, for others it’s an uphill, tedious battle that has no identifiable start, leaving them with their head in their hands silently asking, “Is there no end?” The good news is if you’re the latter (or fall somewhere in between) there are strategies you can learn, but like any skill, the end brain game is practice makes permanent. But you don’t have to listen to me, Zig Ziglar said it best when he coined the phrase, “Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.” Time is relative when it comes to preparedness, and time is also money as they say, but many still cling to this notion that they don’t have the time for planning. We all want to be successful at our endeavors, right? So, MAKE the time, and give it the undivided attention it deserves. 1. The more you practice preparing, the less you panic under pressure, which matters on a physiological level because it’s our body’s chemical and delayed stress response that inhibits our brain’s ability to actually retrieve information. 2. Take it one goal at a time in the beginning and create one of my personal favs…lists. There’s magic in lists, and studies show that putting pen to paper with a goal makes achieving it that much more likely, and they’re also a powerful way to set down some of that mental baggage we all carry. 3. Don’t want to re-invent the wheel or know where to start? You can find any number of planners with an online search but my favorite is the Legend Planner, made specifically to support goal setting and achievement in a handful of core areas in an individual’s life. Pen and paper too old-school? Use apps like Google Keep or iPhone Notes. Organizational over-achievers can take it up a technological notch with a productivity app. We can’t plan for everything, life shows us that daily, but there’s no reason why we each can’t get a little piece of the success pie. Prioritize planning and the results will speak for themselves.
Volume 10 Issue 1 11
