I’ve been fortunate enough to have many mentors, knowingly and not, throughout my life thus far. I trust there will be many more to come, and I welcome them with open arms.

One such mentor is a leadership and communication advisor named Susanne Conrad. She has been a powerful coach to me both hands on and from afar, and has shared many exercises for growth with me.

One of them is this Circle Exercise designed to help you discover what you really want. So grab a pen and paper and let’s get started:

The Power of Knowing What You Want

If you are having trouble defining your goals, you might need a bit of help imagining what it is you want out of your life. This exercise provides a good place to start clarifying this. Take out a blank piece of paper and draw a big circle on it. Inside the circle, start writing down all of the things you know you want for yourself in your life. On the outside of the circle, write down all of the things you don’t want in your life. This will help provide a starting point for determining the kinds of things you wish to create in your life and things you do not. As you start to revisit your goal setting, be sure to come up with things that satisfy the ideas represented from inside your circle.               

If you find that it’s easier for you to identify things you don’t want in your life, as represented by the outside of the circle, then try an additional exercise. Create a collage or a vision board of images you are attracted to. Creating a visual of things you like and enjoy may help guide you in clarifying what it is you ultimately want to achieve in your life.

Susanne has a great company called Igolu where you can go for more exercises like this, and even one on one coaching. I highly encourage you to visit her site and check out the amazing things she’s doing.