Ok, a few days ago I posted about goal setting and new years resolutions, while it was an interesting post, it really only brushed over my ideas.
Now the topic of goal setting has been covered time and time again, and quite often, our senses get dulled from the overexposure, but the fact is, not only is goal setting important, it works.
So let’s look at how specifically do you set goals.
Stage 1 - The big picture
This is knowing what you want to do with your life… it’s kind of an ongoing, ever-developing life objective, or not so much an objective but rather a design on how you want your life to look.
A good thing to do here, as sinister as it seems, is to write your own Eulogy.
That is, what would people say about you at your funeral, and in case you’d like to ask, yes I have written mine.
What this does is puts things into perspective, what sort of person do you want to be, and how do you want to be viewed after you’re gone? You might remember the scene from Gladiator where Russell Crowe (sp.) is speaking with Marcus Aurelius, and Marcus is is questioning his lifes work, and what he has done, is he a liberator? A loved king? Or a Tyrant?
Who do you want to be, what sort of person do you want to be?
Now this isn’t a moment for granduer or over the top BS, it is simply, what do you want to be in your life, what sort of person.
What will unfold as you begin to decipher who you want to become, will also give you what you want to do to get there. If you want to retire (who the hell wants to retire) a billionnaire, then what must you do to get there in the first place?
Find out your end life goals, write your eulogy, then move onto Stage 2.
Oh, just so you know, don’t expect to sit down and write your life goals in one sitting… good luck to you if you can do that (same goes with the Eulogy) unless you have already invested a lot of time an energy into thinking about who you want to become it will probably take you weeks, months or even years to eventually figure out for sure. But whatever you do, get something down on paper, so that you have at least got a start.
Stage 2 - Getting Specific
Now once you’ve managed to define or at least get a general grasp of where you want to head in your life, now comes to the time to break it done into ‘bite’ sized chunks…
What this means is you look at your life and go, ok, this is what I want to do, what do I need to do in the next 5 years to move towards that goal?
This should be relatively easy, and it will be things like, quit my job, start a new business, find a life partner I’d like to marry, fairly major stuff, basically the objectives you’re going to need to meet to accomplish your life. (These can be 5 or 10 years by the way, I tend to stick with 5).
Stage 3 - The Yearly Progression
Year on year, every year, you need to set, and reset your goals, how did you go this year, what did you accomplish, this is where I come back to the whole new years resolution thing… it doesn’t stick, because there is no greater good you are working towards, there is nothing to keep it in alignment with who you want to be!
So, these are going to be more specific, if you want to start a business it will be start my part time business and have an income of 20k this year, or if it’s health related, get to Blue Belt in Karate (using martial arts as the example).
Essentially there are 5 parts to your life, and I will usually set 2-3 goals in each every year, nothing overloaded, nothing major, but it’s always moving me towards my 5 year, and end life objectives.
Stage 4 - A Monthly Account
Every month you need to re-evaluate where you are on the continuum of your yearly objectives, if by February you haven’t started on anything or aren’t at least moving towards them, there’s something wrong, and 9/10 times you’re not going to come anywhere near close to reaching your yearly goals.
The monthly stuff is more specific and narrow again, it’s things like, setup 5 new Adsense and affiliate sites this month, specific stuff that you can literally tick off and go, yep, I’ve one that.
Stage 5 - The Daily Grind
This is where most people live.
They have their day planners and their to-dos for today and they get through them and go wow, what the hell did I do today?
You know why you do that? Because you didn’t have any clear outcome of what you wanted!
The day to day stuff is the absolute nitty gritty specific actions that need to be done by you to achieve your outcome.
As the saying goes, the buck stops here.
If you don’t perform, nothing happens.
It’s doing this like, writing an article and posting it to your site, going to the gym, eating 6 healthy means, telling your wife or husband you love them 3 times as a minimum, spending an hour playing with the kids, reading for 30 minutes on something more educational than Robinson Crusoe (meaning something that is going to move you forward)
This is how you plan a magnificant life, I know of no other way of doing it, and it’s how we’ve achieved what we’ve achieved in such a short span of time.
I wish you all a wonderful 08, follow what I’ve said here, put it to use in 08, and notice how much of a difference it makes to your life.
Wealth and Abudance,
Daniel Turner
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