Ticking Things Off From My 5 Year Plan

Recently I did something I never really do, I read back over some of my older blog posts and guess what, it totally inspired me. It's easy to forget sometimes, or get caught up in your 'of the moment' mentality to forget about where you've been and what you've achieved, and actually it was so nice to sit and relive some experiences, put myself back in the shoes of yesteryear and so on. This lead me to reading back over my Five Year Life Plan, written pretty much a year ago exactly, and I am amazed I am that I've been able to turn some of those plans into a reality. 

It's not that I had forgotten what these dreams or ambitions were, or that I needed to look back over them to remind myself, but what did surprise me is that we do go through life setting ourselves these goals and then maybe don't appreciate the achievement of them when we actually complete them. 

Reading back over them and realising that I am achieving some of what I wanted to achieve in five years, its an incredible self esteem booster, and made me think that I need to cut myself some slack, I am making positive moves, even if at times it doesn't feel like it, but also that maybe I need to set myself shorter timeframes from completing things. Maybe five years is too far in advance, and so much of life is so uncontrollable that we have no idea how things will change or evolve by then, so that these goals should maybe be one to three years long instead. After all, why do something in five years if you can do it in one? 

To recap on my previous post, the things I said I wanted to do, were a mix of very specific and then more general things and included, paying off credit card debt, travelling more, learning a new skill or language, presenting in one forum or another and then around my blog. 

Drum roll please....well, a year on from when I wrote this post, I can proudly say I have completed, or started doing all of these things in different measures. My credit card debt is completely paid off (hooray!), I have travelled to two new countries and enjoyed new experiences in countries I have visited, I have started French lessons and I have presented to bigger groups in much more formal settings. I also tried upping my blogging frequency, but found that for now at least, the quality of my content is better on a weekly rather than bi-weekly basis. 

So yes, safe to say, I'm proud of where I've managed to get to with some of those goals and plans. Some were bigger hurdles than others, but they all helped add to my self improvement and to help keep me striving to improve myself and ambitions.

In light of the above, I do feel like I need to be making some new goals and plans though, and although I have multiple lists and things I do want to achieve, I like that my previous list was so pragmatic and I want to keep things that way and set realistic timeframes to achieve them. And truth be told, now is not the time for me to be doing that. 

If you read my post last week, I am in the midst of #upgradeseason, using the next few months to set myself up onto a good path for future endeavours and feel like it's a bit of a transitory time to be making goals that far into the future. So right now my goals are to keep on as I am, and within a few months I'll have a better grounding on what I want to achieve in the next chapter.