Pause and reflect to get creative with your future planning

Make space to pause, reflect and think, to inject creativity into your goal setting and future planning, so you can really do life!

We’re in February already?!

It’s mid February and you may be asking yourself, how on earth did we get here already? I know I am. I’ve had the busiest January of my life, packed with filming branded campaigns, pitching projects, blogging, travelling to Sweden and Austria, and organising my four-week trip to the highlands of Scotland, which is where I am now. It’s been an amazing start to the year, but I put a lot into all my projects and I know I needed to take a step back, to pause and think.

I’ve decided to live the slow life for a bit, to take a step back from the 100 miles per hour life I live in London. Always rushing between the gym, meetings and social engagements, grabbing something quickly to eat as I travel between. Being in Scotland feels like the first time I’ve had the chance to pause, think and reflect in months and it’s lead me to think why that is.

Can’t stop, won’t stop

Let’s take a look at the last couple of months; December is the end of the year and at the same time as we are supposed to wrap up the year that’s passed and plan for the year ahead, our social calendars are buzzing leaving no time to reflect and plan.

January swings round and we are swamped with advice on how to set and achieve our goals, but motivation can be at an all time low due to the time of year, the weather and feeling like we are lacking things to look forward to. Then, what happens to those goals?

Make time and space

Thinking, planning, reflecting and creating do not happen just like that. We have to make time and space for them just like anything else we work hard at. I make time to workout every day because it’s important to me and I want to build my strength. This concept seems so obvious; set a goal, make a plan and dedicate time and energy towards achieving it.

We are very good at doing this with tangible things like learning, training, developing our skills and abilities, but how good are we at doing it with thinking and creating?

I realised I have been so wrapped up in the doing of life that I forgot to make time for forward thinking. That needed to change, and that’s why I’m now in Scotland re-writing my rules of how to do life for this period in time.

Engage with your motivations

The doing of life is the surface level stuff, but engaging with our drivers and key motivators is the hard stuff that’s underneath the surface. It may take time and effort to work on, but it’s always a worthwhile investment of your time as it’s these drivers that we rely on to underpin everything else we do.

Don’t deprive yourself of the chance to dig under the skin, unleash your creativity and create time to think. Your discovery might just be your big break!