Are you having trouble pinning down your goals, never mind reaching them? Do you despair of ever living your dreams in this lifetime? Take heart. It is possible,
regardless of how overwhelming it may feel right now. Here's how to define and refine your goals and begin to live your dreams.
1) Define your goals. Do you know what your goals are? The first step will be to do a brain dump of everything you would like to do. It doesn't matter
how big or how small. If it comes to mind, write it down.
You are basically doing a brainstorming session and no thought is too small or right or wrong. It just is.
2) Sort your goals. Now that you have completed your brain dump, it is time to sort your goals. A goal is simply the result or achievement toward which effort is directed. It is an aim, or an end.
Grab a sheet of paper and divide it down the middle. Mark the left column S and the right column L.
"S" is for Short-term and "L" is for Long-term. Sort every goal into one of these two columns.
3) Prioritize your goals. You want to be working on short-term
goals and long-term goals in tandem so goals in both categories are progressing. That being said, if you try to work on 10 goals at once, it's unlikely any of them are going to be achieved.
So, choose ONE to TWO goals in short-term, and ONE to TWO goals in long-term...and begin working on those. These are your priorities.
Once you complete a
short-term goal, choose another and begin working on that new one. Once you complete a long-term goal, choose your next one and begin working on that new one.
Obviously, the long-term goal
is going to take longer, but it will never be achieved if you don't begin working on it a little bit at a time.
4) Assign overall deadlines to your goals. When would you
like to complete each? Write that date next to the goals you've chosen.
5) Begin breaking your goals into mini-goals. Each goal you've chosen likely takes a number of steps to complete. So figure out what the steps are that are required, and begin on one of them. Add deadlines to
each mini-goal as well to help keep you on track.
6) Allow for changing circumstances. No matter what our plans are, life happens. Sometimes, we need to adjust our plans or
change our timetables. This shouldn't derail your efforts to complete your goals.
At most, you may need to take a step back and figure out how to rearrange or reschedule things to continue
moving forward towards completion of your goal.
Changing circumstances shouldn't discourage you from completing a goal. They should encourage creativity in figuring out a way to
continue.
7) Enjoy the journey. In being goal-oriented, we can sometimes lose sight of why we set goals in the first place. Most of the time, we do so to make our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, better.
Don't forget, as you're putting in the time and energy to achieve your goals, to enjoy the journey and all of your mini-successes along the way.
8) Living the dreams. Ideally, achieving our goals should lead directly into living our dreams. If we are finding that achieving our goals isn't leading into fulfilling our dreams, it's time to re-evaluate our goals.
As we get older, our dreams do change. We may not have many of the dreams at 50 years old that we did at 30. We just need to evaluate what our current dreams are and make sure that our goals are taking us towards those dreams.
9) Keep it manageable. As you go through your goals list, keep the number of things you add to your everyday daily TO DO list manageable. After all, you are the best judge of the time you have each day to devote to a particular goal or activity.
10) Plan your work. Work your plan. Each of these tips is really pointing to this tip. Without a plan, we don't function efficiently. So, plan your work, or actions or steps and then, work your plan. That is by far the best way to achieve your goals.
I would love to hear your latest goals. Reply to this newsletter and let me know what they are. I'll publish them in a future edition so GON readers will know what other GON readers are working towards in their lives.
