Quest in Peace

The holiday is over and it's back to reality this morning but with a difference.

On Friday (and during our walking food tour of Bologna) we took a call from our solicitors to confirm the exchange of contracts on the purchase of a new home, under construction and due to be completed by the end of September this year.

This will involve a move about 25 minutes drive South from our current address and into the heart of Cheshire. It's the place we intend to spend the rest of our lives.

I'm never happier than when I'm on a "quest", whether it's training for a bike ride, preparing the launch of a new coaching programme or any other target.

As described by Frederic Hudson and Pamela Maclean in their book "Lifelaunch - a passionate guide to the rest of your life", there are those of us who are happy when we are "questing" (as I call it) and, conversely, dangerous when we achieve our goals as we can fall into the doldrums until we find the next challenge.

My quest for a new home began with a vision that was established 5 years ago in conversation with my business coach Rachel Turner and she has been regularly heard over those years asking "will it buy the house?" in response to some of my daft ideas and "BSOs" (bright shiny objects).

Thanks to great coaching, I've remained focused and last week's contract exchange is the fulfilment of a lot of very hard work by all concerned at work and at home.

As with any new build, there are going to be a lot of "extras" to pay for over the months ahead - and so any thought of doldrums can be quickly extinguished - in fact, my next task will be to construct a spreadsheet in Google sheets that I can share with Annie, who will be lead on outsourcing, design, build, pricing and negotiation and project management.

As we discussed last night - "I'll make the money and you will undoubtedly spend it wisely".

Quests are fractal - you can have many of them on the go at the same time, some large and others small - run your first marathon in 12 months from now and run 5k today, read 30 books before Christmas and read for 30 minutes this morning, write your book or write your first blog.

Having those quests is what keeps me motivated.

I've set myself two financial targets based on our news:

1. The amount I want to invest in the new property furbishment before we move in;

2. The amount I want as a cash reserve when we move in.

As always, I'll be building the spreadsheet over the days ahead and then reverse engineering what I need to accomplish in business in order to get there.

The quest begins and I've never been happier at the prospect of a lot of focused work ahead.