In 2020 I set out to write a series of posts titled “A 5 Step Formula for Getting Things Done”. It was to be 5 articles in sequence, laying out a series of steps you could take while developing your mindset which would lead to positive outcomes when it came to executing on your goals.
Sounds good in theory, only it didn’t quite work out that way.

I did complete and publish one of the posts, which can be found here. I also wrote the second post in the series but never finalised it, and the last three were left as bare headings with nothing written.

The most interesting part of going back over old writing is finding gems of wisdom or insight that were still forming, or half-finished ideas that hadn’t been fully expressed.
One such example is this: “So often we think we’re the ones in charge, that we are the ones that must take care of everything, that’s if ‘it’s going to be, it’s up to me’. But what if there was another way.”, but I never finished it to say what the way might be. Fast forward and I have something I think is worthy of finishing that sentence. More on that later.
Along with unfinished sentences and unwritten pillars, my world view has changed in the past six years. If I’d finished and published all of the posts you would have read a series structured something like this Pillar 2: Define It, Pillar 3: Act on It, Pillar 4: Navigate It, Pillar 5: Review It. You would have had an introduction to the ‘Areas of Life’, from a coaching perspective, and a perspective on how ‘goals are triggers for growth’, and here’s how you plan a step-by-step approach to getting your goals and developing a growth mindset along the way, most of which can be useful.

But I’ve changed, and it started with that half-finished sentence, the one I’ve taken the opportunity to finish some 6 years later, so it’s from here that I’ll set the scene for the updated series.

Picking up from where that sentence left off, a way where we could work from a place of alignment, so rather than trying to force or strive, to make things happen by sheer force of will, which I confess I’m guilty of when delivering projects.
My view of goals has evolved over the years. Firstly, I saw them as the path of getting what I wanted, then as a catalyst for growth, one where it challenges us to dive into the unknown, to make our world bigger.
But all this seems like pushing and striving.
Where I sit now is something simpler, and perhaps more elegant. Goals are fine, they can be fun, or it may be something you want to experience. The goal itself is a method of focusing attention, but the real job is alignment. When you start to realise that you live in a Thought created experience, that even the ‘you’ who you thought you were is a jumble of beliefs created from thought, and that you exist in a field of infinite possibility, the job of the goal is to signal alignment. The question stops being ‘what tasks do I need to do to have that thing?’, to ‘who am I that would have that thing or experience naturally?’
Rather than effort and striving it becomes alignment. Not from a perspective of wishing, where the goal is something outside of you, or exists somewhere on a future timeline, but who you are now, so having the thing or experience is a natural representation of you.