Now that the intensity of the new year has started to subside, many of us find that our good intentions are being replaced with old habits despite our best efforts to a make positive change, yet for some aspirations, such as that of having a baby, it’s not the case that we can “just stay focused” to achieve the results we want.
Making a positive change in your life isn’t limited to this specific time of year, but now is a great time to get serious about your dreams, goals and aspirations for the year ahead – particularly if it relates to family planning.
When you look back at some of the past decisions you’ve made which have affected your life today, you’ll find that most things happened for a reason, and if you do have regret for some of the decisions you made, you’ll find almost all decisions are reversible.
Indeed, if your partner decided to have a vasectomy on the basis he didn’t feel he wanted children, or perhaps anymore children, it’s possible to undo this with a reversal vasectomy. In this sense, what would appear to be a permanent and definitive change can always be undone.
You have infinite possibilities for what happens next in the story of your life, and that of family planning. Agreed, you are not always in control of the process – but there’s always something you can do to achieve your dreams, because behind each dream is a search for a particular emotion and an unyielding resolution to get what you want.
Let’s take having a child, for instance.
Imagine you find yourself wanting children but are struggling to conceive.
Do you just give up and say “oh, well, it wasn’t meant to be” or do you exhaust every possible option from vasectomy reversals to IVF, to nutritional supplements, and novel positions… you wouldn’t simply give up. You would either find a way or you would make a way.
In this sense, you would take massive action and be extremely persistent in your approach because you had a big enough “why”.
See, when someone has a big enough reason to do something they will always find a way to achieve it. Yet, when it comes to family planning it can feel there are some limitations on this – for instance, some people aren’t able to have children, naturally, and therefore they need to connect with the emotion that would provide them, rather than the act of having a child itself.
This way, once connected with the emotion (e.g. the desire to nurture), they can find alternative ways to meet that emotional need – for instance, adoption or fostering.
There’s a popular saying that states when the “why” is big enough the “how” will show up; similarly, when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Therefore, the very first step in this series of principles for achieving your dreams this year is to start with why.
1. START WITH WHY
You want to have absolute clarity on “why” you want what you want. If we take this outside of the context of family planning and look to dreams many people have – simply wanting a nice home, a fancy car, or a million dollars isn’t enough. There’s an emotional reason behind everything you want – and your job in this process is to uncover emotion that you are trying to achieve rather than the ‘thing’.
2. WHERE IS “THERE”
In this sense, you need to connect with where is there for you — that’s to say you need to determine your destination, and what your idea of happiness looks like.
Let’s take this into a romantic context, as you also need to qualify the vehicle you are choosing for your destination.
For instance, let’s say you want to feel really happy in your romantic life.
You might be focused on your partner, let’s call him Steve, as the vehicle to meet that goal… so, you focus all your energy on Steve — yet, in reality, Steve isn’t the goal, Steve is the vehicle that you’ve chosen to achieve your goal of having a happy romantic partnership.
Steve, however, might not be the right vehicle to achieve this, therefore you must consider the best vehicle to get you to your final destination. If you’re in a relationship with someone that doesn’t agree with your values in terms of how to raise a family, there might be a mismatch, and as such – you might need to consider whether the vehicle you’re in will get the result you desire.
3. FIND THE FASTEST WAY
Now you know where you want to get to, the next thing to do is to find the fastest and most efficient route to getting to where you want to be. When you plan your route, in a car, you find the fastest and most efficient route to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Think of the way in which a GPS map will tell you the fastest way to get to your final destination. You need to do the same.
4. CHUNK DOWN YOUR GOAL
Sometimes we can feel overwhelmed, and like our goals are so big that they are impossible to achieve… particularly if they relate to having a family, as often we don’t feel we are in complete control of that process.
The next step, therefore, is to chunk down your goal and break it down into bite size pieces and key performance indicators so that you have a little path of stepping stones to reach your destination… this could be as simple as taking a vitamin supplement, doing yoga, or ensuring you have sex at the most fertile time of each day.
5. TAKE ACTION
The final, and most important step, of course, is to take action. So many people fail to take action as they feel they have no certainty, but you don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step, you just start off with little baby steps, and over time, these baby steps get you to where you want to be — whether that’s to have a thriving business or a beautiful baby.
