Focusing on your goals can change your life

Veronica Esslinger from Sharon Jackson on Vimeo.

Even the people who you think are the most confident, sometimes need a bit of help achieving their goals.

About 15 years ago, I was picking blackberries in a field near my home, with my two small sons. We came across another young mum, also trailing two boys, who was doing the same thing. This chance meeting across a blackberry bush developed into a strong friendship that still exists today.

Vods, real name Veronica, became one of my closest friends so, when she and her family moved to the south of France seven years ago, I made the most of ‘visiting rights’. (Well, who wouldn’t if they had a friend living in the south of France!?)

Now the children are grown up, Vods and I get more opportunities to discuss things without interruption. One day, as we walked through the lovely town of Antibes, she mentioned that she wanted to do something with her life, rather than just be seen as someone living in the south of France ‘lapping up the rays’. I’d always thought of her as highly confident and someone who knew what she wanted and how to get it. But it was apparent that this wasn’t necessarily so.

As we talked, she narrowed her goals down to three key areas:

• Teach English
• Work with special needs adults and/or children
• Indulge her love of singing

My advice was to write down these goals and focus on them because, in my view, this is the only way to make things happen in life.

Since that time, Vods:

• has created an English club for up to 40 children of different ages
• is teaching adults with special needs
• is singing in a local choir, and intends to create a small group of like-minded singers who will give concerts for the community.

She says she would never have believed that things would turn out this way, and is a firm believer in the power of writing down your goals and actioning them.

If you would like to learn more about the power of setting goals and how to achieve them, contact: sharon@ucantraining.com or view our website: http://www.ucantraining.com