Do you ever feel ‘blah’ or just a little stuck, enough to make you unmotivated to do anything but stay stuck?

How about overworked and just a little hazy on why you’re even doing all this work or what the end goal actually is?

When you’re in the thick of grinding your booty off to make your dreams come true, it’s really easy to lose sight of why you’re doing what you’re doing. 

Which is kind of weird…you’re working so incredibly hard towards something but forget what the something even is. 

Anything in life worth having takes time and extreme dedication. But with time and extreme dedication, you can sometimes become unaligned with the goals you’re working towards and the overall dreams you have. 

I’m currently in the trenches of writing my first book and man, have I felt this way. 

It’s not easy to write a book and when I’m tip-tap typing away on my keyboard every day, trying to make ideas flow and make sense, trying to tell stories in a relatable way, trying to paint a picture in the mind of my readers, it can be really easy to lose sight of the big picture. 

At times like these, some may suggest taking a break from your work and coming back to it with a fresh set of eyes, so to speak, or a new perspective. But the truth is, I don’t have time to do that! I got a deadline to meet, people! 

Feeling misaligned with the big picture of my book and my dreams but also not having the proper time to take a step away from my work, I invented the ‘Alignment Break.’

It’s a short break you take to realign with your goals and dreams and get a better sense of the bigger picture. 

Here’s what an Alignment Break looks like for me and how it’s helped keep me focused and on track for my short-term goals and long-term dreams. 

If you’re in the thick of working toward your dreams and have lost sight of the bigger picture, or perhaps it’s a little hazy right now, this should be able to help you.

First, close out all the tabs on your laptop and shut it down

This may seem arbitrary, but it really helps to quit the noise of our mind and work towards realigning our work with our goals and dreams. 

When you’re working towards your dreams, it can feel like they’re are infinite things to do to make it happen, as reflected in our mile-long to-do list, and all the tabs opened or bookmarked in our browser. 

Just for a second, quiet the noise and close out the tabs. 

If you can’t quite your mind, you won’t be able to successfully realign yourself, you’re just going to keep yourself more stuck. 

I know it may feel painful or pointless to do, but hey, you can always go through your history and re-open all the tabs. 

Next, reflect on your past and where you’ve been.

Think about the days before you were working on your dream. Before you even had your goals outlined or knew what your dream was. 

Life before your dreams are realized can be pretty dull and maybe you experienced something similar. 

Or perhaps your life was better, and now the goals and dreams you have for yourself are to dig yourself out of a pit. 

Either way, think about where you’ve been and specifically what led you to where you are today. 

Is what you wanted for yourself the same or different than what you want for yourself now? If it’s different, in what ways is it different? Do you want more or better for yourself now? Or are you driven by the same motivating factors you once were motivated by?

For me, this looks like thinking about why I even started writing the book in the first place and understanding if the goals that I had at the beginning of writing this book are the same or if they’re different. 

It also means looking at my life and what it was like before starting to write the book. For me personally, my life before writing this book wasn’t great. I was working a job that wasn’t fulfilling and struggling to find purpose in my life. 

I dreamt of the day that I could write full-time, which is what I’m doing now, and I never want to take that for granted. 

Practicing gratitude is important in realigning yourself with your goals and your dreams. It’s easy to take things for granted or feel frustrated by failures or fearful of the unknown. Because every dream to become reality has some aspect of failure and unknown that make them hard. 

But realizing that you’re in an incredibly fortunate position to be pursuing your dreams in the first place helps you realign yourself with your dream when the going gets tough. 

Now, reflect on your present and who you are today. 

In what ways do your present thoughts, words, actions, and routines align with your dreams? In what ways are they misaligned? 

Sometimes when we’re misaligned with our dreams it’s not the fact that our actions are misaligned but the fact that our thoughts about our dreams and our ability to achieve them are misaligned. Or perhaps the way you speak about your dreams and your ability to achieve them are misaligned. 

If you are misaligned in one area, it can cause a disconnect between the daily work it takes to achieve your dreams and the big-picture vision you have for your dreams. 

For me, it’s easy for my daily actions to be aligned with the big-picture vision for my life. But it’s harder for my daily thoughts to be aligned with the big-picture vision for my life. 

Recognizing this allows me to know what to keep a close eye on in the day-to-day trenches of working toward my dreams. 

Finally, reflect on where you want to go. 

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to realign yourself with your dreams is to reflect on where you want to be going. Sometimes, we start our journeys with an idea in mind, but as we’re actually on that journey, the end goal changes. 

Even if the overall goals remain the same, some aspects of the goal may change or become more clear the more time and work we dedicate to actually making it come true. 

In order to keep progressing you must have a forward focus. And perhaps the reason why you feel misaligned or stuck is because you have a past or present focus. 

It’s good to reflect on the past and present, but it’s not good to focus on the past or present, especially if you’re misaligned or stuck.

Take stock of what your ‘why’ is or what it has transformed to become along the journey to ensure that your current trajectory is aligned with it. 

Even if you can’t fully understand or envision your dreams, you can anticipate the type of person it takes to make those dreams come true. 

So it’s up to you, right now, to work toward becoming that person.

Real Talk

This entire Alignment Break should take no more than 15 minutes of your time. The more time and genuine thought you put into it, the more beneficial it will be.

Your past, present, and future self all play an important role in your ability to make your dreams come true. 

If you feel stuck in the weeds of your current goals or projects, try envisioning your past, present, and future self in these contexts to help realign you with your overall goal.

It’s one thing to know what your big-picture dream is. It’s another to know whether or not your daily thoughts, words, actions, and goals align with that big picture. 

Taking an Alignment Break allows you to make sure you’re not accidentally detouring off route and, if so, how to get back on track to achieving your dreams.