Goal Setting = Personal Strategic Planning
Personal strategic planning helps you clarify what you want in each of the 6 life areas as below. Ask yourself how happy and fulfilled you are in each area. If you were to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest, you would probably find your lowest ratings in the area where you experience the most stress and unhappiness. Consider what areas may need adjusting for you to be more satisfied with your results.
Financial and Career / Business: How do you become extremely successful and satisfied and move to the top of your field? How do you get your financial life under control and achieve financial independence?
Relationships: How do you achieve balance between external success and personal relationships?
Material things: What are the things you want to ensure you live a more fulfilled life?
Social and Leisure: How do you make time for fun and enjoyment?
Personal Development: How do you identify and acquire the key knowledge and skills that you need to live an extraordinary life? What do you need to do to enrich yourself spiritually? How can you make a real difference in the world and leave a lasting legacy?
Health and Fitness: How do you achieve and maintain high levels of fitness, energy and overall well-being?
Once you rate yourself in these 6 areas, you can determine what steps you need to take to turn things around. The following 7 steps make up a system of planning and goal setting you can use to decide where to put the emphasis of your attention in each of the 6 life areas.
1) Values: What are the values, qualities and traits that are most important to you in each area of your life? Go back and add to the section on values!
2) Vision: If your life were perfect in this area five years from today, what would it look like?
3) Goals: What specific goals must you achieve to fulfill your ideal future vision in that area?
4) Knowledge and Skills: In what areas will you have to excel in the future to achieve your goals and fulfill your vision?
5) Habits: What specific habits of thought and action do you need to become the person who is capable of achieving the goals you have set for yourself?
1) Daily Activities: What specific activities do you have to engage in each day to ensure that you become the person that you want to become and achieve the goals you want to achieve?
2) Actions: What specific action or actions are you going to take immediately to begin realizing your ideal future vision?
The greater the CLARITY you have about who you are, what you want and what you need to do to create the life you envision, the more power you have to make it happen.
Now is the time to decide specifically want you want to achieve in the particular areas on your life. Just some guidelines in deciding on what goals are important to you. I like to refer to the acronym SMARTER when formulating goals:
S Specific. Goals have to be specific. The brain likes detail. Vague goals means vague results. Not I want to earn more money, but “I choose to have a net monthly income of R_____. Much like you formulate your affirmations.
M Measurable. How will you know when you have achieved your goal. Some people have a goal to be happy. How do you measure that? Rather have goals to do the things that you think will make you happy. Have a system to measure you progress.
A Achievable. Your goals have to be achievable and realistic. Is it do-able?
R Relevant. Is the goal relevant to you or is it someone else’s goal for you. Make sure your goals are your personal goals.
T Time related. Goals have got to have a deadline. By when do you want to achieve the goal.
E Excitement. Your goals must excite you. Do you get goose bumps when you think of your goals?
R Recorded. Your goals have to be written down. A Harvard study showed that only 3% of people were independently wealthy. The only measurable difference between this group and the rest was that the 3% group had written and specific goals and a plan for achieving them. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel, the formula for success has already been written.
Some further guidelines to writing the goals in the optimal way for the brain to work at its maximum potential to help you achieve your goals:
· Write them in the present tense as though you had already achieved them.
· Include some ‘emotion’ words. For example “I choose to be HAPPILY driving my new red Porsche Carrera down the highway.
· Start the goal statement with the words “I choose to have .. ..”.
· Create choices that you deem worthwhile and valuable. Willy nilly goals are not going to provide much motivation for you.
A great book to read on this subject is Brian Tracy’s book “Focal Point”. He also has a free e-book on goals.
Decide now on the 5 most important goals you want to achieve in each of the areas of your life. Back to the Secret – Asking, Believing and Receiving. Asking is goal setting.
In a future Blog I will address how to go about planning the achievement of a goal so that nothing is left to chance.
