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5 steps to better goal setting and goal achieving
By John DeVries | March 12, 2008
Most of us have goals. It’s been proven statistically that when you write your goals down you’re far more likely to achieve them. However, I’ve found that without some way to effectively manage my goals and aspirations, many simply are forgotten or left behind. I’ve read goals I wrote years before and thought to myself, “I forgot I even wanted that.”
Putting your goals down in your journal isn’t so bad, but it doesn’t take long before you either forget to go back and review them, or stop writing in your journal all together. Since your actions generally dictate what direction your life takes, it is of vital importance that you act from day to day in a way that will help you get where you want to go. I’m going to assume you’re familiar with the idea that your thoughts and feelings effect your actions, which in turn effect your external life results and conditions. But, before we get down to the business of my own personal goal setting system, I want to first address why you should or shouldn’t have goals, and what they mean in the larger context of your life.
Setting goals
Most of us set goals with the intention of getting the things we want out of life. While this isn’t necessarily a horrible approach, it may not necessarily be the best mindset for goal achievement.
“The life committed to nothing larger than itself is a meager life indeed.” Martin E. Seligman
If you spend your years simply pursuing your goals with the belief that achieving them will make you happy, I can tell you already, from my very limited life experience, that you will never actually achieve happiness. This is a pretty bold statement, but if you want to be happy I truly believe you need do only two things. First, commit your life to something greater than the satisfaction of your ego (your desires), and second, realize you and your life are not your circumstances. At your core you are much more than your past experiences, opinions and aspirations. You are already complete, your nature is already perfect. There is nothing for you to get or do to achieve happiness. It is already inside you; the best you will do in the world will come from the overflow of that nature, not necessarily from the pursuit of your dreams.
This is not to say you shouldn’t have dreams or a direction for your life. I simply want you to understand that if you get everything you ever wanted, you still may not actually be happy. At the same time, if you accept yourself, your life and your circumstances utterly and completely, you will then have the potential to be in ultimate peace even if your circumstances are sub-par. I cannot recommend The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle strongly enough. Before this book, I was running around in circles trying to make myself the best person I could be. I figured I would be happy if I got what I wanted and became who I wanted to be. I think this is the case for many people interested in self-improvement. Thus, I advise you to read this book. It has been one of many life, and paradigm altering experiences I have had.
In summation I’ll simply say this. Set goals because they are an outward expression of the best parts of you, your purpose and your true nature. Pursue the things you want in life, but not with the expectation that they will bring you happiness. Happiness and peace are within. In the words of Joseph Campbell, “Follow your bliss.” And I’ll quality his statement by saying, “Bliss is within”. I know it’s a bit paradoxical, but truth often is. Read Eckhart’s book, further discussion of this topic is outside the scope of this article.
The goal setting and achieving system
This is the system I use to keep myself on track. It’s a combination of ideas I’ve collected from others mixed in with many ideas of my own. I think you’ll find the paragraphs below contain within them an extremely effective way for you to manage both the direction of your life, and the completion of your goals.
Step 1 - Decide on a direction for your life
Ok, this article is already going to be over 2500 words so I’m just going to provide some resources here. I really don’t want to beat the dead life-purpose horse. You can find a lot of quality information on discovering your life purpose all over the net and in a lot of great books. But, the reality is, you need to get this squared away before you start chipping away at your goals. Otherwise, in the words of Stephen Covey, and I’m paraphrasing, “You’ll arrive at the top of the latter only to find its resting on the wrong wall.” So, figure out who you are and what you want out of life, then start working towards it. If you haven’t done that yet, then make that your initial goal. You can still use this system to begin that quest.
- Life purpose and direction resources -
Finding purpose and passion in life: How and What? Urban Monk
Meaning of Life Series Steve Pavlina
Book: Life on Purpose W. Bradford Swift
And, two mostly shameless plugs of my own *cough* *ahem*
The ultimate meaning of human life
Step - 2 Establish your goals
If you’ve gone through the hard work of completing step one, this should be fairly simple. I like Steve Pavlina’s 12, “life areas”. If you establish goals in each one of these areas I think you’ll end up with a mostly balanced and successful life. This is extremely important; if you neglect too many areas, your life will feel very incomplete. Neglecting even just one can result in setbacks in many others. You’ll achieve a lot more of you take a balanced approach. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to work on all of them at once. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend that. But you do need to have an idea of where you want to be in every part of your life, not just one aspect of it. Steve Pavlina’s list:
- Work
- Financial
- Relationship
- Home & Family
- Physical Health
- Mental
- Social
- Emotional
- Spiritual
- Character
- Contribution
- Fun & Adventure
If you need clarification on what all of these areas mean and entail, listen to Steve’s podcast on Truth and Awareness.
You could set these goals in two ways. You can decide where you want to be in each of these areas roughly 5 years from now, or you can establish goals that you would consider the “ultimate accomplishment” in each of these areas. I think either way would be effective, I tend to do a little of both. In some areas, I know that I may want something very different in 5-10 years, so I plan for that. In others, I think I have a pretty good grasp of what I want out of life. For example, In 5 years I might want to have read 1,000 books. I’m not sure how many I could read in a lifetime or if I may become incapacitated and unable to read at some point. So, I would make that a 5 year goal and leave the rest up to fate. After 5 years, I would set a new goal. But, with my spirituality, I pretty much know I want the end result to be utter peace, tranquility, unconditional love and transcendence of self (ego). I’m relatively certain that will be a constant, even if I don’t achieve it in this lifetime.
So, set goals you think are appropriate. Think big, but also realize you may not have time in the years you have left to achieve them all. I doubt I will get all the things I’m working towards before I die, but I may achieve many of them. Accept that your time, energy, and even the worthiness of your pursuits is limited. This will allow you to pursue them without being overly attached to the outcome.
“You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything.” Peter McWilliams
Step 3 - Divide your goals
Many people set goals they really want to achieve, but they don’t know exactly how to go about getting the results they want. What you need to understand is that the path towards your goal may involve many steps, possibly hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands. Interestingly enough, the path you think may get you to your goal may not even be the correct one. Thus, you need to be open and willing to pursue opportunities provided to you by God, the Universe, your higher power… whatever you believe in. If you’re a die-hard Atheist, you’re on your own with this. But, that’s not necessarily all bad either.
Every goal has two dimensions to it. There is the initial goal (the thing you want to achieve that you do not yet have). And within that goal are all the smaller goals which must first be accomplished before you get the end result. For example, if your goal is to pay cash for a $24,000 dollar car, smaller goals that need to be achieved first might be: opening a bank savings account, saving $500.00 a month, or visiting the dealership when you have the money.
The beautiful thing about it is, you don’t need to know what every step along the path to your goal is. You only need to identify two things.
1. Decide what the end result is supposed to be. E.g., 20 lbs. of weight loss, run a marathon, find a fiance, eat more chicken wings than your friend… whatever.
2. Decide what you can do right now or in the very near future that will get you on the path towards what you want.
Go ahead and divide up your goals in all of your 12 different life areas. Figure out where you want to be in each area and what you can start doing in the very near future to begin working on them.
Step 4 - Create your vision card
You may have heard of vision cards or vision boards before. But we’re going to create the vision card on steroids. This is going to be the ultimate concentration and visualization tool. More importantly though, by creating a card you are able to keep it with you at all times. Mine is in my wallet. If at any point I need to refresh my memory regarding what to do or what my goals are, I can pull it out.
Creating this card takes a little time and a fair amount of work. It also requires a bit of technological know-how. I will explain all the steps as best I can, but being slightly familiar with the web, digital image searching and image editing will be extremely helpful.
What we’re going to make is a 4×6 card that has images of your ultimate goals and your life purpose on one side, and images of immediate actions and short term goals on the other. For example, on the back might be a picture that represents 2 million dollars to you. Maybe that’s how much you want your assets to be worth someday. On the front, the corresponding short term goal might be represented by a small image of a book. Perhaps this reminds you to keep working on your book which you think will help both promote your notoriety as an author, and get you closer to your 2 million.
I use images as much as possible on these cards because images and symbols speak to your subconscious much more effectively than words. On the front of my vision card are 12 images (one for each area of my life). Most of those images also have words under them or over them with specific goals. E.g., gain 15 more lbs, run a 10K, meditate for 30 min every Saturday, etc… On the back I have written my life purpose, and I have 12 more images (again, for each life area) that represent my ideal circumstances if all of those 12 areas were exactly how I wanted them to be.
- Creating the card
First, go to Google and select image search. Search through Google to find images that are meaningful to you. Whether it’s a pretty girl, a beautiful house, money, or calm and quiet waters, pick images that elicit positive emotions in you. You’re not going to be distributing any of these, they are simply for you to look at. I’m not going to suggest that you steel other peoples’ work. If you feel you need to contact the owners of these files and ask them if you can use them only for your own personal enjoyment, that’s fine. I will admit that I did not. I have not and do not ever post other peoples’ intellectual or artistic work on my website without their approval or credit. However, no one is ever going to see my vision card but me. If this is a moral dilemma for you, you can also cut images out of magazines or books you own. This actually would be simpler, but it won’t allow you to format the card in quite the same way since you’re bound to the physical size of the images you pick.
One way or another, find 12 digital images (you could even take your own) of your long term goals and another 12 that represent actions and short term goals you can accomplish very fast. Download GIMP, a free image editing program. Install it and create a new, transparent image that is 4 inches by 6 inches at 300 dpi resolution. You’ll actually need to create two since you’re going to make a front and back to your card.
Explaining how to use GIMP is outside the scope of this article. If you’re new to all of this you can find plenty of help by searching the web. What you basically want to create is a two sided card. One side represents your over all dreams, ambitions and life direction. The other represents the things you’re going to do now to get there. I like using digital images because I can pick from a huge variety, re-size them to fit on the card, and I can use GIMP to place text over them. This way the card means something to me both emotionally and intellectually. Once I’m done I print both sides and then either laminate it or put clear packaging tape over it so it doesn’t get messed up.
There are 12 images on each side which represent all the areas of my life. I don’t use words on the back (the side that represents my long term goals and life direction) because I feel it’s limiting. I simply put images that are meaningful to me on that side. At the top though, I do have my life’s mission statement so that I can read that whenever I feel like I’m off the path.
On the front, I have listed very specific goals that correlate with the objectives on the back side. For example, I have a picture of a guy in the kind of shape I want to ultimately be in on the back of the card (If I die in a car accident my family is really going to be confused by this card). On the front, the correlating goals are that I want to get a personal trainer (did that), be able to run a 10K in May, weight 190 lbs by September, and get certified as a personal trainer by fall. All of these will be done in 6-7 months or less. Then I’ll replace the images on the front with something that will bring me to the next level. Maybe I’ll want to run a marathon, weight 210 lbs., or look a certain way. We’ll see.
Once you have that done, it’s time to set up a system that will make the card you just created, effective.
Step 5 - Weekly planning
This is really the fulcrum of the entire system. The card is worthless unless you use it to apply your goals to your life.
There isn’t much sense in having a focus and a vision card if you never use it to get anywhere. So, each week I pull it out on Sunday and have a look at both sides. I look at my schedule and start filling in actions I can take during the week to accomplish things that will get me closer to my short term goals. Most people fill their weekly schedules with appointments, to do lists and obligations. I fill mine with priorities, my goals, and activities that coincide with my highest ambitions in life. Sure, you’ll see things like, “meet so and so there”, or, “go shopping”, etc… But by and large, my calendar is an eclectic, self-improvement montage. I think It probably would only make sense to me.
This may seem a bit strange to you, but if you think about it, it’s totally logical. Most people never get where they want to go in life because they’re to busy doing all the things that won’t get them there. My schedule revolves around who I want to become as a person and the life I intend to create. My external responsibilities, appointments, and work commitments are subordinate to those objectives. If I’ve scheduled time to write a blog post, run a certain distance, read a book that will help me, meditate, or call a friend, I usually do those things as if they were commitments to others. In fact, your commitments to yourself and to your life should be just as important as those you make to others. If you can’t trust yourself to uphold the promises you make to you, then no one else can truly depend on you to make good on the promises you’ve made to them.
Summary
Once you’ve been using this system for a while you’ll find you have to start replacing the images on the front of your card. If you need to replace the stuff on the back, that’s even better! The beauty of it is that if you decide to change your focus, abandon a goal, or set a new one, all you have to do is make some adjustments to your card and those adjustments will be readily seen in your actions and in your life, since they are all organized and connected. By always having your dreams, goals, and purpose with you, your life takes on a whole knew level of focused attention and direction. You’ll get more done because you’re actually organizing your time around your values and your dreams. It’s an awesome way to accomplish what you set out to do.
Often I’ll journal about my week on Sunday when I review my card. I don’t like to journal every day, but this allows me to keep a journal without becoming a slave to it. It can also help you sort out what goals are worth going after and what ones may not be that important.
Also, don’t worry if you feel like you need to change a goal or abandon it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Even the greater context and focus of your life is bound to ebb and flow with time. As you grow, your purpose and direction will grow with you.
Topics: Change, General, Goals, Life, Live better |