It’s time to be creative

Overcome the overwhelm and find your focus.

People keep saying 2021 will be full of opportunities, and I agree. It’s just quite hard to see them when you are stuck in the day-to-day survival mode that seems to be the norm right now.

The problem most people face is they are so overwhelmed.

So here are three simple things you can do to help you get creative for 2021 so that you, your team and your customers can have a better time of it next year.

• Take stock.
• Dream a lot.
• Set some goals.

Well, that’s what everyone is saying, right? Well, here’s why what I am saying is different.

Instead of just taking stock, I want you also to check your perspective. The conversation we have going on in our head is the most powerful conversation when it comes to seeing opportunities and being able to dream.

Understandably the pandemic and on-going lockdowns, the tier system and cancelling all of the Christmas plans we’ve made, puts us in a very negative place. Let’s not deny it – let’s acknowledge it for just a moment and then set it aside. 

The first thing you need to create is some headspace, to clear your mind from all of the overwhelm, which is why I created the Brain Dump Exercise. Once you have some clear thinking space, you can start.

Let’s change our perspective.

The Player

Imagine for a moment you are playing your favourite sport. When you are playing your game, you are on the pitch or the court.  All you can see is the field of play, the other players and the ball. Everything you focus on is ‘in-the-moment’, short term, tactics for the next play.

When you are on the pitch playing the game, it is hard to think about the next game or even the following season, you focus in just on the here and now, playing to win or, more currently, playing to survive.

The Coach

The next level of perspective is the coach on the side of the field. They are not on the pitch playing the game but orchestrating the players. Their focus is on the match as a whole and the impact it will have.  They are thinking about which players to bench, to save for the next game or to get the best team on the pitch right now. 

When you are the coach, you think not just about the game played you are thinking about the next three games, the next training session, the talk to the team at half time.  You are focused on the now with one foot in the near future.

The Owner

Getting even further away from being on the pitch, you find the owner of the club. Their perspective is different again. They are watching the game, they are thinking about the next few games, but they are also thinking about the next season. Thinking about the players, they might be able to afford, the investment in the stadium or the training squad or support team.

They are thinking well into the future, perhaps one or even two seasons ahead.

As a business owner, you will have rightly spent much of this year as a Player, focused on the day-to-day survival of your business.  If your business is thriving because what you have is in demand, your challenges will have been in your supply chain, changing legislation, capacity planning and keeping the wheels turning.

If the pandemic has impacted your business, you will have been focused on how to retain staff, the furlough scheme, keeping in touch with your customers, making and continuously changing plans.

For some, it has been all about deciding to carry on or to close down because they don’t have the reserves of the customer numbers to be able to continue trading.

All of those decisions are being made on the field of play, in the now, getting to tomorrow.

To make plans for 2021, we need to come at the conversation from a different perspective, one even higher than the owner sitting in their director’s box high above the field of play.

We need to rise to a level high about the stadium and reach a non-judgmental viewpoint above the fray. Only there will you have the opportunity to dream your future into existence; only there will you be able to see your business from the right perspective.

When we are stuck in the confines of our day-to-day world, we cannot see the big picture.  Our dreams are limited by the everyday necessities that cloud our judgement and prevent us from seeing beyond the short-term horizon we are operating within.

Now is the time to take stock, to dream your new future and to set your goals for 2021 so that you can see a path of progress to a more successful 2021. 

To be able to do that, you need to view your world from that nonjudgemental perspective high above the fray, and that is challenging at the best of times. With the overwhelm caused by the constantly changing landscape during 2020, it can be impossible.

The First Step

What you need is to create some space to think, and for that, I created the Amazingly Powerful Brain Dump Exercise. It is a simple yet powerful tool that I use as a regular part of my monthly goal setting and planning.

It is a great way to give you the space to create that all-important non-judgemental perspective by helping you get clarity about all of the thoughts going on in your head so that you can find the space for fresh thinking.

Click here to buy this powerful tool now and start dreaming of a better 2021.