Plan, plan, plan, goal-set and make resolutions. We’re told everywhere we turn to plan, create goals and set resolutions. All of which will help you reach your final destination, from weight loss to career goals and even relationships. Plan to get your life back.
But what if this fails? What if nothing goes as planned?
Planning is an essential part of life. It helps center our mind and create focus so our actions are intentional and not off-the-cuff.
Yet, all in the same breath, planning also creates expectations. Expectations that determine our emotion and our joy. Expectations that can leave us in full celebration or complete brokenness.
More commonly, unmet expectations leave us with a sense of brokenness inside that is almost uncontainable. Hurt, fear, worry, anger and resentment when our expectations don’t go as planned. When life doesn’t go our way and everything seems to crumble beneath us.
Ending Expectations But Not Dreams
If we’re honest with ourselves, goal-setting, resolution-making and planning are often just great thoughts. In my own life, I’ve experienced this on too many occasions. Spending hours planning, but never following through with the plan.
Or better yet, setting unrealistic expectations (aka goals) that never have a possibility of getting met. Last year was a great example. I was going to conquer the world. OK, maybe not the world, but I had set some pretty high goals that weren’t necessarily unrealistic. I set an expectation that this was going to be my year.
I even bought a shirt that said those exact words, “This Is My Year” (because that makes it official). Yet not two weeks into the new year, my life began to crumble around me. It happened slowly at first, but quickly compounded until I found myself nearly breathless and hopeless, in a heap on my bathroom floor, sobbing.
From there, I spent too many months in this heap of hopelessness, questioning my purpose, wondering how and if I would ever move beyond this point, and seeking but never managing to find joy. I was broken, shaken and beaten-down.
My plans were crushed, my to-do list growing but getting me nowhere. Ultimately, my unmet expectations had ruined my life and what seemed like my dreams.
Yet there was still light.
The Answer to Achieving Success
I know I’m not alone in this battle. The battle of fearing unmet expectations. Of disappointment when life doesn’t go the way you had planned. When you seem to be getting absolutely nowhere, drowning in a sea of things gone wrong.
The good news is there is a way. A new direction. An answer to this madness. A way to finally get your life back.
It starts with self-awareness, which creates belief. With knowing yourself, knowing the God-given vision for your life and attaching your true emotion to these things. It means developing belief.
Wait. Hold up. What?
I know this sounds all woo-woo, and you’re sure it won’t happen, but this is good stuff. It’s called growth and stretching. Sure, it can be a scary place. Allowing ourselves to be true, honest and feel emotion can be scary. Walking into brokenness is not necessarily a fun place, but it is a healing one. Ultimately, it is the route to success and abundance.
So stick with me.
This is the best way to achieve success, whether that be:
- Reaching your health goals
- Losing those last 10 pounds
- Deepening your relationship with your spouse
- Being present with your kids
- Balancing your work plus life
- Saying “no” more
Whatever you’ve set out to do, the only way you’ll achieve success is by knowing where you want to go. Not where you think you should go or where others are telling you to go, but deep down in the pit of your heart, in your soul, through the Spirit knowing where you’re going. Then you can find success.
It’s not found in wishy-washy ideas, thoughts, plans or resolutions.
Success is found in the knowing, believing and running through the action created behind the plan.
The action comes through the emotion, and the emotion is formed through the vision. Sometimes that means feeling the emotions of brokenness so you can feel the success of abundance. To fight through the insecurities at the gym. To drive a crappy car so you can get out of debt. To forgive your spouse 100 times over and choose love over being right. To eat well and live well, not for a number or for happiness but to ultimately restore your health.
This is the emotion, the passion and the belief that creates the action.
You must fight to believe the best this year. to live in hope and faith for what’s to come and be expectant that opportunities and change is at your doorstep.
There may be fear lurking in your mind, doubt pouring out your soul, and even anxiety creeping up. But there are changes ahead and they are coming for you. It all begins in your mind.
—Mikaela Kate
The Beginning Steps
How do we create the emotion that creates the action that creates the success? By knowing yourself. Opening your eyes, seeing beyond what you’ve thought to get to what you believe.
I’ve recorded a podcast (along with my friend and mentor Mikaela Kate) to help you walk through this journey. To get your life back even when nothing seems to go as planned. It starts with emotion, with knowing and feeling where you’ve come from and creating a vision and an emotion for where you want to go. This is how you meet your dreams. This is how you find success.
It’s not through good intentions. It’s through purposely living. Doing everything with a purpose.
Listen to the podcast and get my own story, my redemption story, and the initial steps you can also take to get your life back.{eoa}
This guest blog post by Alexa Schirm was originally posted on Mikaela Kate’s blog. Read the original post at mikaelakate.com.
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Mikaela Kate is a speaker, writer and coach. A graduate of Iowa State University with a degree in marketing, she discovered her love for strategic thinking, big pictures ideas, and meeting people where they are at. These skills and passions later equipped her to plant a church with five other staff members (Veritas Church, Iowa City, Iowa). From there she moved to Sheffield, England and worked as the Young Adults Leader at St. Thomas, Philadelphia. While in England, her passion for America grew, and her desire to see her native land transformed for Jesus ignited. She sees people living out their God-given purpose as a key to this transformation. Mikaela currently lives in South Carolina and is an active member of The Father’s House Church.
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