When was the last time you jumped into a small boat and drifted into the ocean without oars? Oh… You’ve never done that? Why not? There seems to be an endless supply of reasons why we wouldn’t do that with a tiny boat, yet we do it with our lives every day. I cut unstable men loose constantly but eventually get pulled into someone else’s Crazytown Shore because I neglect to make solid goals for myself — goals that help me feel fulfilled. Instead, I get sucked into a nimrod’s toxic wasteland and spend months spinning down their emotional refuse drain until it takes all my strength to save myself again. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day.

I’ve got plenty of things I want to accomplish in life, but they are all currently just dreams. And the only difference between goals and dreams is a deadline. So far I have yet to set a meaningful plan in motion for any of my dreams.

I attempted documenting my day this past weekend in order to see where my time goes because I complain about having a lack of time to get things done. Until approximately 11am on Saturday — when a friend called and asked me to intervene property retrieval during the breakup with her boyfriend — I was somewhat focused. But after my friend’s phone call, I stopped documenting and completely lost focus. After a few hours of favors, I was completely scattered. And I completely forgot to document the rest of my day.

Attention Deficit Disorder, maybe? Hmm… Does it really matter? I tend to think if I focused on a goal — and the steps leading to that goal — I’d get there sooner. Right now I’m a hungry rat in a sewer chasing my tail with no direction.

I’ve got a few Mind Mapping apps that I’ve been thinking about using to take a look at what I want to accomplish next. A mind map is an octopus-like graph of ideas. It looks like this; this is a mind map of presidents:

It’s basically the next-generation outline of thoughts and ideas that can be used to set and accomplish goals. The two apps that I’ve downloaded are:

SimpleMind+

MindMeister

The first ideas you jot are your dreams — your end goals. From those end goals, you create lines to smaller steps in the process. By the time you’re finished, you should have a general plan of steps it should take to accomplish your dreams.

I’m going to poke around with these and layout some dreams for myself. When I’m done I should be able to start planning deadlines and goals.

Have you used mind mapping? On what? How did it work out?

I’m currently convinced that without goals, I’ll end-up tying myself to another toxic situation. Instead, I want to tie myself to my dreams and make my life exponentially better by pouring the effort into myself instead of someone else. I think this is a fabulous idea and I’m convinced it’s going to work!