Chapter 8 | The Art of Setting Goals - Part 3
(Part 3 out of 4)
Prioritizing you Goals
Now that you've examined your goals, review your list again and select what you think are the four most important goals that can be reached within a year, the four most important goals that can be achieved within three years, four most important goals that can be carried out within five years and finally select what you think are the four most important goals that can be accomplished within ten years.
These sixteen goals will provide you enough work for now...
Getting Down to Details
Take a new sheet of paper.
Write down your goals again, only this time give specific details - how long will your yacht be, which foreign language will you learn, will you take an evening class or a day course.
In addition, indicate why each goal is important to you.
Now is the time to convince yourself to leave a certain goal on the list or replace it with another – which is fine, because if you don’t know why a certain goal is important to you, it's likely you won’t put much effort in carrying it out or rather do it half heartedly.
Knowing what you want will get you motivated, knowing why you want it will get you highly motivated and inspired.
You might find that goals you initially thought were important, turn out to be of less significance than they seemed at first.
Go back and review your list.
Mull it over, improve and refine the goals you truly believe in, goals that inspire you, that motivate and excite you... so that by the end of this task you’ll have four goals to achieve within a year, three years, five and ten.
Once you've written a short paragraph detailing each of your sixteen goals - copy them to your personal dairy or any other convenient place, where you can review them often.
Take note: It’s essential you take some time every week - to go over these goals, arrange or maybe rewrite them, to add new goals or perhaps throw it all away and start a new list.
Setting personal goals is not a one time thing, it’s an ongoing process.
Notice: It’s vital you keep track of your progress towards achieving the goals you set yourself.
You don’t want to linger or even worse, "lose direction".
Keep in mind, goals that can be achieved in the near future are no less important than your long term goals.
Goals that can be carried out within a day, a week, a month, six months – are called "confidence building goals".
Work hard to achieve these goals.
When you do, it will boost your self-confidence to cope with your long term goals.
Write the goals you want to accomplish by next year, in your diary.
The order is up to you - you can separate them by weeks or months, what's right for you.
Don’t forget, part of the fun in making such a list is putting a check mark by the goals you’ve achieved.
Try to put at least one check mark on your short term list, every week.
Make a habit - every time you put a check mark beside a very important goal or a long term goal in you list - celebrate it.
Be pleased with what you've accomplished, praise yourself – for success is sweet.
People grow through experience, primarily two - the joy of success and the grief of failure.
Meaning, if you can't succeed to achieve one of your goals, deal with the failure.
Seek advice, counseling or any other sort of assistance – to help you carry out your goal.
There's no shame in asking for help, on the contrary.
Like I said earlier in this chapter: go where expectations are high and requirements are high – only this way you'll grow and develop yourself.
I'm certain the reason most people don’t give goal setting its suitable emphasis, is because it’s "a lot of work".
And it is a long and agitating task.
Like I mentioned earlier, you’ll have to improve your list of long and short term goals, arrange,
re-shape, re-prioritize your goals, add new ones and maybe remove some.
That being said, don’t you find it interesting that when it comes to their job, people put in time and hard work, but take little time (if any) to plan their future?
Don’t take part in this.
You must be willing to put in time and hard work, you must become an expert in making plans!
In his book “Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill mentions an amazing research data:
98% of the people won't be able to say what they want more than anything in life, or will say vaguely single words like "security", "wealth", "dance".
None of them would be able to precisely define these terms or suggest a plan by which they hope to accomplish these aspirations they so hazily stated.
Remember: people without a plan are usually people with a plan for failure.
Think about this sentence for a minute, realize its impact. Set yourself goals, set a plan.
Place yourself with the upper class people, who use this power to work for them.
The fact that you took the time to write down your goals, indicates you have genuine intentions.
And in order to succeed - you must have sincere intentions.
Keep in mind: we all hope for a better tomorrow, but hope doesn’t make the future better, a good plan does.
Hope needs the assistance of a good plan, without one it will eventually become a disease called “passive hope”.
Be serious about this: set a plan and write it on a piece of paper.
This advice comes from the most successful people.
Human beings have a gift: they can aspire, dream - without this, life is not life.
We must dream and more importantly, never give up on our dreams.
Remember: Our only limitations are the ones created in our minds.
Mind you, the goals you’ve set yourself affect you throughout the day.
Your goals affect the way you shake hands with someone, your goals affect your attitude, the way you feel and look, the way you dress, the way your walk and speak, your personality, your daily activity – every day and all day long.
At one of his lectures, Rohn asked someone: "What are your goals for this month?" He replied: "If only I could scrape up some money to pay those aggravating bills" - this was his goal.
O.k, so this fills the definition of "goal"... But it's such a lame goal, it certainly isn't inspiring.
I don't suppose you're likely to jump out of bed full of enthusiasm, on a Monday morning, thinking: "Today is going to be so much fun, I'm going to scrape up some money to pay those aggravating bills".
The point is - goals should be enjoyable, they should challenge you and reward you generously.
They should enable you to grow.
Here's a question worth asking: "Who do I have to become, to get everything I want?"
What insights does this question bring you?
Which thoughts come to mind when reading it? Jot down these insights and thoughts.
You can write for example, which skills will you need to develop and which to learn.
Spend some time to write a few sentences about this issue - the paragraph you just wrote will provide you some goals that will assist you on the subject of self development.
Understand this doesn't end here – apart from the question what are your desires and goals, be prepared to ask yourself "am I willing to do whatever is takes to get what I want?".
If you're lazy, if you're not eager to learn or read, if you're not willing to grow and develop – you won't be able to pull and draw what you want, towards you.
Therefore, either change your goals and desires or change yourself.
What I mean by 'change yourself' is work on your abilities.
If you currently feel you lack the skills to get what you want, remember your abilities will expand (or shrink) in order to match your dreams.
That's why the process of setting goals is so important.
The more you work on it, the more ideas you'll have on how to change yourself and develop.
South African golfer, Gary Player, said: "The harder you work, the luckier you get".
Work hard on setting your goals, and luck will come your way.
There's nothing you can do about the past, the past can not be changed - there are many things you can do about the future, you don't have to be the same person you were yesterday.
You can make changes in your life - far off changes, in a short period of time.
You can make changes that perhaps you can't imagine right now - if you'll give yourself a chance.
You have a talent and potential, that you possibly haven't 'hit' yet.
With time you will be able to 'squeeze out' and express more and more of your talent and potential, slowly you’ll notice you’re doing things you never thought you’d do, confront things you didn’t think you could cope with, come up with ideas you never had...
All this describes the "spark" that will occur as a result of the process of setting your goals, as a result of your desire to succeed.
Next are two key sentences to keep in mind:
* Success comes to those who become aware of it.
* Failure comes to those who permit themselves to become aware of it.
When you acknowledge your goals and are eager enough to achieve them - the answers will come to you. I don’t have an explanation as to why this works... All I know is that it works.
Give yourself an opportunity to become anything you want and accomplish anything you wish for.
---
Continue to Chapter 8 | The Art of Setting Goals - Part 4
---
* Chapter 8 | The Art of Setting Goals - Part 2
* Chapter 8 | The Art of Setting Goals - Part 1
* Chapter 7 | Interpersonal Communication - Part 2