"Define your dream and have a burning desire for its achievement" Nothing starts in LIFE but first a DREAM!!
Let me ask you, what are some of your goals in life?
- Be your own boss?
- Achieve financial freedom?
- Maybe you just wanted to make a few hundred extra dollars a month?
Whatever your dream is, big or small, YOU CAN ACHIEVE IT!!
BUT, YOU CAN'T HIT A TARGET YOU CAN'T SEE!
We will use this lesson to develop some concrete goals to use as a road-map toward your success. To help us do that we will use the 7 Steps to Powerful Goals as our guide.
Goal Setting – Powerful Written Goals In 7 Easy Steps!
by Gene Donohue
1. Make sure the goal you are working for is something you really want, not just something that sounds good.
I remember when I started taking baseball umpiring more seriously. I began to set my sites on the NCAA Division 1 level. Why? I new there was no way I could get onto the road to the major leagues, so the next best thing was the highest college level. Pretty cool, right?
I have been involved in youth sports for a long time. I've coached, I've been the President of leagues, I've been a treasurer and I'm currently a District Commissioner for Cal Ripken Baseball. Youth sports are where I belong; it is where my heart belongs, not on some college diamond where the only thing at stake is a high draft spot.
with your values.
2. A goal can not contradict any of your other goals.
For example, you can't buy a $750,000 house if your income goal is only $50,000 per year. This is called non-integrated thinking and will sabotage all of the hard work you put into your goals. Non-integrated thinking can also hamper your everyday thoughts as well. We should continually strive to eliminate contradictory ideas from our thinking.
3. Develop goals in the 6 areas of life:
- Family and Home
- Financial and Career
- Spiritual and Ethical
- Physical and Health
- Social and Cultural
- Mental and Educational
Setting goals in each area of life will ensure a more balanced life as you begin to examine and change the fundamentals of everyday living. Setting goals in each area of live also helps in eliminating the non-integrated thinking we talked about in the 2nd step.
4. Write your goal in the positive instead of the negative.
Work for what you want, not for what you want to leave behind. Part of the reason why we write down and examine our goals is to create a set of instructions for our subconscious mind to carry out. Your subconscious mind is a very efficient tool, it can not determine right from wrong and it does not judge. It's only function is to carry out its instructions. The more positive instructions you give it, the more positive results you will get.
5. Write your goal out in complete detail.
Instead of writing "A new home," write "A 4,000 square foot contemporary with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths and a view of the mountain on 20 acres of land.
6. By all means, make sure your goal is high enough.
Shoot for the moon; if you miss you'll still be in the stars. Earlier I talked about my umpiring goals and how making it to the top level of college umpiring did not mix with my values. Some of you might be saying that I'm not setting my goals high enough. Not so. I still have very high goals for my umpiring career at the youth level. My ultimate goal is to be chosen to umpire a Babe Ruth World Series and to do so as a crew chief. If I never make it, everything I do to reach that goal will make me a better umpire and a better person. If I make it, but don't go as a crew chief, then I am still among the top youth umpires in the nation. Shoot for the moon!
7. This is the most important, write down your goals.
Writing down your goals creates the road-map to your success. Although just the act of writing them down can set the process in motion, it is also extremely important to review your goals frequently. Remember, the more focused you are on your goals the more likely you are to accomplish them.
So your goals are written down. Now what?
Every time you make a decision during the day, ask yourself this question, "Does it take me closer to, or further from my goal." If the answer is "closer to," then you've made the right decision. If the answer is "further from," well, you know what to do.
All my adult life I've heard that the most successful people write out their goals. I know, several times I have done just that myself but I never saw any results from it. In fact many people every year on Jan 1st do just that. They create a list of goals and within a couple months many couldn't even tell you where the list is anymore. I think the problem has been that we didn't know what to do once we made a list. I'm going to see if I can shed some light on the subject and show how to use this process to actually ignite a burning desire in you; A desire that creates a motivation to actually accomplish your goals.
Next we are going to start the process of Dream Building.