You have insight into yourself, you have done the groundwork and research, now you need to establish your destination and how you are going to get there.
The first step in your action plan is to clarify your goal. You have already narrowed down your options to the one you wish to pursue. In order to make a plan, you need to articulate exactly what it is that you want to achieve and your goal should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. And it should also be written in a positive way.
Next, brainstorm and capture all the steps you need to take and work out what order you need to do them in. This is effectively your ‘to-do’ list. It is a list of all the things you need to do to achieve your goal.
It is inevitable that you will come up against obstacles in working towards your goal. You can help yourself by identifying as many obstacles as possible upfront and working through how you can overcome them. The obstacles may be general, or they may be linked to specific tasks in your plan. There will of course be unforeseen obstacles that you come up against further down the line, but you will already have experience of an approach to take to overcome them so you can apply the same principles as and when you need to.
Then create a list of the resources and support you have available to you to help you achieve your goal and to help you overcome obstacles.The resources you list could be external such as books, support from others in your network, financial grants, savings or they could be internal such as your strengths, skills, habits, knowledge, values or emotional techniques.