Life Forces

Keep moving forward

We’ve all got things we want to do in the world, things we want to make, change and be a part of.

Whatever you want to do, there will be things that help you and things that stop you. By analysing these helping and stopping ‘forces’, you can plan to work towards your goals more effectively.

‘Forcefield Analysis’ is a great tool for this, and helps break down your large goals into smaller, more manageable ones.

Step 1: Take a moment to think of a goal that you have. It could be a big life goal you have already but doesn’t have to be anything massive, just a realistic goal so you can practice this method.

Step 2: Draw the diagram below.

Step 3: Write a short description of the goal in the far right of the piece of paper.

Step 4: List all the forces that help you move towards your goal on the left.

Step 5: List all the forces that are stopping you on the right.

Step 6: Now you have done that, draw an arrow for each force, Make the arrows longer or bolder depending on the strength of the force that it represents. The longer or bolder the arrow the stronger the force.

Here’s a simple example of what it might look like:

It can be really helpful to see it all laid out like this. Importantly, we often think that when we want to achieve something, we need to increase the helping forces.

Step 7: Think about what you could do to strengthen each of the helping forces. Add 3 things to your diagram.

We don’t often think about how to weaken the stopping forces.

Step 8: Write 3 things you could do to weaken the stopping forces.

Well done!

You now have a visual picture of your present situation. If there are more forces pushing towards you’re goal than away from it, then you’ll move in the right direction.

Bonus

If you want to take this to the next level, choose one of the helping or stopping forces that you would like to work on and make that the ‘present situation’. Now you can write all the related helping and stopping forces for that. You can repeat as necessary.

By doing this you are analysing, understanding and breaking down what you need to do in order to reach your goal. The goals will become small enough to be reached in simple steps. You will then be able to agree on some action points that can be dealt with quickly and easily.