A start-of-year Anxiety Dream - mining the gems

I'm still shuddering from the impact of an anxiety dream last night.

Yesterday, my first day back at work for 2022, didn't go how I'd planned it. I'd envisaged it as a gentle stroll through my purpose, goals and priorities for the year and a fistful of ancient To Do Lists from last year, followed by a purposeful tidy-up of the toppling piles of papers and files I left all over my desk and office floor in the scramble to get to the end of 2021.

The reality was an unfocused, disorganised and interrupted day where I didn't even succeed in doing justice to my emails!

So it's not surprising that I awoke in a sweat at 4 o'clock this morning from a nightmare in which I was hectically busy, surrounded by seething crowds and under pressure of time. I had to pack my bags in order to catch a flight, and found I had mounds of completely unnecessary and difficult-to-pack stuff (pots and pans!?!) that were stored in several different places. Worse still, I knew that in trying to pack this irrelevant stuff, I was missing a really fascinating, important and valuable workshop. I was desperately anxious, knowing that I was in all likelihood going to miss my flight, and I couldn't even get back to the hotel to see if I could rebook it for a later time.

Classic anxiety dream, huh? What a way to start the year!!!! It took me several hours to regain my equilibrium. I started by deciding to thank my dream for bringing some important matters to my attention. 

So then I had to work out what these important matters were. What gems did I come up with? I think my dream was trying to tell me that:

• I'm doing too many things and sometimes spreading myself too thin;
• I'm also doing a whole bunch of things that are not important - and in fact are rubbishy, hampering and useless;
• doing those useless things is distracting me from focusing on my real goals; so
• the anxiety arises because the result is that I'm not doing enough to fulfil my potential and realise the dream summarised in my vision and purpose.

How does this manifest and what can I do about it?

• in the past my plans for each week have identified several crown deliverables (many thanks for this term to a business trainer of several decades ago), then listed a number of tasks to be completed that week;
• however the crown deliverables are not the significant outcomes and goals that I want to achieve: they’re simply activities that seem to be urgent or important (thank you, Stephen Covey!) that I've been listing in the absence of any organising concept or overall goal. So both my so-called crown deliverables and my list of tasks become one long To Do List, with the result that I'm focused on activities rather than outcomes; and
• therefore, I'm in the process of redefining my crown deliverables to ensure that each one accurately reflects a core aspect of my vision, purpose and outcomes; and
• every week I will write out those same crown deliverables (improved as necessary) - and below them, every task in my list is directly aligned to deliver real progress towards one or more of these relevant outcomes.

Sounds good, huh? Yep, I was pretty impressed, myself. But... oh yeah ... we all know what happens to New Year's resolutions, right?

Well, I decided to hold myself ACCOUNTABLE. How?

At the end of each day and each week, I will check how well I have completed the tasks I have set, and will assess my overall progress towards my crown deliverables/outcomes. And I'll track my time in 15-minute intervals, as any good professional does -but including my non-chargeable and non-purposeful time, to identify:

• how much of my time I invested in activities that deliver satisfying and relevant progress towards my vision and purpose and to foster other important things like relationships with my family and friends - and how much wasn't;
• what is distracting me from focusing on my own vision and purpose; and
• what I will change to maintain my focus on them.

I actually train people on this stuff in terms to help them prepare evaluate-able environmental training programs. How embarrassing is it not to apply it to my own passion-based business! Worse still, it's what every mentor has been telling me to do for the last 20 years or more.

So, I'm immensely grateful to my nightmarish anxiety dream for finally getting it through to me!

Big thanks also go to my mother, who encouraged me to write all this down, and to the many wonderful mentors I've been lucky enough to work with over many years; Ann Andrews, Bill James, John Shackleton, Trav Bell, Catherine Palin-Brinkworth, Phil Preston and many other wonderful professional speakers, plus mentors Kim Baird and Andrew Baird of Amazing Business, Ron Lal of Momentum Mind Lab, Clare Williamson, and Belinda Thomas Inc – not to mention the ongoing learning from my friends, clients and professional colleagues!