Pine tree needles carpet the streets still, like Narnia trying its damnedest to escape out of all the wardrobes of West Edinburgh.
Formerly festive trees rest by the rubbish bins while my dogs firmly believe in magic. After all a forest appeared overnight, then vanished! More than once! The air is crisp and fresh with possibilities yet to be discovered.
After surviving the first month of the year, you’ve gotten back into the swing of things it’s only natural that your mind turns to grander projects. Maybe you’re going to complete the Couch to 5k program (it’s brilliant!) or maybe your eye is firmly focused on career goals.
Whichever goal you’re working towards this year, we wish you luck! At Always Be Content we take a slightly different view of goal setting. We like to dream big, then make it happen.
Dreams for 2019
2018 was a bumper year for us. We won and were nominated for several awards, which is always wonderful. We solved our client’s problems with creativity and a dash of panache for the likes of Scottish Water, British Gas, University College London, Liverpool City Council amongst others.
We even found the time to spread Christmas cheer with our festive sing-along event in December!
2019 has barely begun and already Always Be Content is in the enviable position of working on a couple of dream projects. We are creative partners with Edinburgh Business Beats Cancer to promote their inaugural fundraising dinner on the 14th of March.
Like so many of us, cancer has directly affected the families of staff at Always Be Content (you can read Pete Martin’s article on “Cutting the cost of cancer” in the Scotsman). To help fundraise ground-breaking research is a great privilege and we couldn’t be more excited to do so.
We’re also in the exciting early stages of a project. The event promotes something that every creature on Earth needs, but only humans seem to struggle with. Sleep!
Many adults struggle to get 7 or 9 hours of sleep due to lifestyle, stress or the seductive allure of TV binges over bed.
At Always Be Content we believe we should all strive to live a more balanced content life, and we’re delighted to be a part of this project. If you’d love to know more about this event, be sure to keep an eye on our social media in the coming months.
What’s your dream?
We want everyone to be as excited about 2019 as we are. We’ve put together some tips to help you achieve your dream projects in 2019. Whether it is as simple as getting home promptly at 6pm or goals aligned to your career, for example increasing sales by 10%.
Imagine!
The key to helping you to achieve your goal is your imagination. You need to turn your goal into a vivid dream that you’re excited to bring into reality. The first thing to do to use your imagination and focus on how you’ll feel after you’ve achieved your dream. If you want to get home by 6pm every day, what does that feel like? Are you delighted to spend more time with your family or will you feel proud of a good job well done? Will you feel more rested and will perform better as a result?
When you have achieved your dream, what will you do differently as a result? If you desire to get home promptly at 6pm, what will do when you get back? See friends, relax or read your children a bedtime story? If you’ve chosen a career goal, when you achieve it, what will be different? Will you get greater respect or responsibility? Be as detailed as you can, make it real and be sure to make it exciting. Once you’ve got your dream as vividly real as your imagination will allow, write it down.
Get SMART
Then it’s time to create a solid plan. Like any target, the dream you’re working towards needs a plan of how to get there, each step of the way.
You’re probably familiar with the SMART acronym:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Timely
Don’t be afraid to break down the journey to your dream into small incremental steps. Whether you’re getting home at 6pm or increasing sales, break it down as little as you can.
Back to the example of growing sales by 10%, one of your steps might likely be “grow customer engagement”. You can break that step down yet further to, for example: generate programmatic ads, paid for and organic social media posts halfway through Q1. (Something that we’re brilliant at creating by the way!)
Whenever you feel like you’re losing steam, return to what you wrote down. Immerse yourself back into that vivid dream that you created, double back into that feeling of excitement to recharge and move forward. You can do so as many times you need to achieve your goal.
Why not share which dream you’re turning into reality in the comments, we’d love to know!
