GOALS The Power Line to Success and Achievement
Are you tired of hearing people tell you that it is impossible to change your life? Is it depressing to see all the goals you have made that have been left unaccomplished? Do you frequently find yourself filled with self-pity and regret at your own lack of willpower? STOP IT NOW! This post is designed to give you insight into how setting and working toward goals can be the powerline to success and achievement.
This post will take a deep look at what exactly makes up a goal, how they can help make changes in your life, and what strategies are available for reaching them. We will also discuss the pitfalls that might show up when attempting to reach your goals, and how to overcome them.
I hope this post will give you an understanding of what it means to have goals, and the power each one can hold for you.
In my previous post I discussed why it is important for you to focus your efforts in life in a specific direction, and how doing so is one of the most important keys to success. I also started addressing what exactly you should focus on by breaking down your life into a hierarchy of priorities. In this post, however, we will take a deeper dive into the world of goals.
The first thing we need to understand about goals is what they are. A goal is exactly that: something that you want to accomplish in your life. However, it is also something that you have made up to help guide your efforts and focus in the right direction. I am sure that all of you have been on a journey before where you have had a number of goals in mind which might include: moving, losing weight, going back to school, getting a degree, buying or selling real estate or cars (or any number of other things), getting revenge on someone who wronged you, making more money and so on. Now, if you take a look at the list I mentioned, you can see that these are all goals, and not each individual goal is as important as the other. Instead, they are all goals and in my opinion they should be seen as tools to help you achieve your life's purpose.
So back to our original list of goals listed above. You may have picked out several things that you want to accomplish in your life which might include: getting married, having children (or not), starting a business or owning and operating your own store, buying a home or condo (maybe even more than one), going on vacation to some exotic location like Hawaii or Paris, and so on. These things would all be goals that you have set for yourself and are important to you. But how do you choose which ones to work toward first?
Well, the easiest thing you can do is to write down all of your goals, and then put them in priority order. The way I would rank them is as follows:
1) Goals that will save your life or the life of someone else (in no particular order) like: stop cancer, end war in the middle east, eliminate drug usage, bring a missing child home safely (last but not least), etc. 2) Goals to make your life more enjoyable or fulfilling. 3) Goals that are right for you at this time in your life, but that you might change later if you decide that you need to. 4) Goals that will help you reach your ultimate potential or lead a successful life (in no particular order). 5) Goals that will be fun at some point in the future. 6) Goals that will help you move closer to your ultimate life's purpose.
So how does this tie into making changes in your life? It's actually a pretty simple concept. Once you have made a list of all the goals that are important to you, you can start placing them in order of importance. Once you have done this, everything else about your life just needs to be adjusted accordingly.
The first thing is to make sure that some goals are in focus before others. For example: if goal No. 1 from my list above is saving someone's life, and goal No. 6 is something that you wish to accomplish in 5 years, then goal No. 6 will not be a priority at this time. It can be made into a priority later if needed, but until then it needs to take a back seat.
Now once you have set some priorities based on each of your goals, the next thing you need to do is to decide which ones are achievable and which ones are not. Let's look at a few examples:
Example 1. If your goal is to change where you live, the chances of you being able to do it right now are slim to none. As a result this goal would need to be placed at the bottom of your priority list, and put in a holding category until you could make it happen some other way.
Example 2. If your goal is to move up in the business world, getting a promotion or working on getting that raise might be exactly what you need to do right now. However if your ultimate goal (No. 4) is to start your own business, then these would need to be placed at the bottom of the list unless you have time for both.
Example 3. If your goal is to become a famous musician, you might have to go do something else and start earning money, because in order to do that you would first need to change some habits (No. 8 on the list), then get an education (No. 3 on the list), and so on.
So as you can see these are all examples of situations that you may find yourself in at one time or another, and when it comes time for making changes in your life, being able to prioritize your goals will play a big part in helping you achieve them.
On a side note, if you are not sure how to prioritize your goals, you can use the following scale:
1. Plan A: This is the crown jewel in your accomplishments. You have made it so that it cannot be changed and there are no other alternatives. Therefore you will achieve this goal by all means (even if it takes many years to do so).
2. Plan B: This is a long term goal that most people have (to some extent), but not in its purest form. Even though this is not the best option to achieve this goal, it may be possible over time to make some sort of change, and therefore can still be achieved (again take lots of years).
cONCLUSION
As you can see, this is a pretty detailed process, but if you are the type of person who likes to be organized and has trouble getting things done or making decisions then this method might work well for you. Otherwise it might just seem like overkill to read all of this, but at the same time it may also be just what some people need to get all of their priorities in order. I would recommend that you try out this process on one or two goals, and then once you have done that try it out on more goals in succession until you are comfortable using it consistently.