I’ve always enjoyed the topic of goal setting and have both read and written many articles on goals.  This week I have a guest post by Jesse Langley, who gives another look at the benefits of goal settings

In the past twenty years, the pace of life has accelerated at breakneck speed. Technology has put the world at everyone’s fingertips—on-demand entertainment, online stores that deliver overnight, webcams you can use to talk to friends across the globe. Instead of taking a tried and true way to weight loss or education, everyone’s looking for the quick fix, or the shortcut.

Life can work that way, but it doesn’t last very long—and then, you end up looking for another quick fix to replace the one that failed you last time around. People now expect things to happen immediately, with little effort and with very little personal cost to themselves.

But life isn’t virtual, and success and happiness can’t be ordered from Amazon. If you want to improve your life, it will take time, dedication, and organization. Creating the kind of life you want requires that you set goals for yourself. Begin by identifying what you want, setting goals to make it happen, and laying a plan that allows you to succeed.

Your heart’s desire

So, what is it that you want out of life? Do you want to begin a new life, or just improve the one you have? Are you working toward a particular goal, like buying a new car or moving into a better apartment? Start making a list of the things you want—lists can serve as visual tools that remind you of your goals and ambitions. Once you’ve made your list, prioritize your goals from “most important” to “least important.” That way, you can put your energy into the things you want the most.

Best-laid plans

You’ve got your list of goals written and arranged, it’s time to come up with a plan. Anything worth having requires working for it, and creating a strategy is half the battle. If you want to pursue an education, research the best options for earning a degree. If  online training or distance learning will make it easier to reach your goals more quickly, choose the school that will give you the best education in the field you choose.

If you want make a large purchase like a new car, put together a financial plan that allows you to take care of your monthly expenses while saving money for your goals. And don’t be afraid to ask for help: not everyone knows how to manage money efficiently, and getting advice from experts will only help you reach your goals more quickly.

Do some life housecleaning

Many of us hold on to people, places and things from our past, whether they’re good for us or not. Doing a major spring cleaning-type overhaul of your living space is a great place to start: get rid of anything you don’t use or need, and anything that might hold unpleasant memories. Donate any items that can be reused to gain good karma. Rearrange your living and working spaces so that they’re comfortable, and pay particular attention to things like your closet and your computer to be sure they’re organized and easy to navigate.

Getting your life organized can help you clear your space, but housecleaning has to involve looking at more than just the physical influences in your life. Doing an inventory of your personal relationships can also force you to examine how the people in your life affect your goals. Friends who are constantly negative, or a significant other who doesn’t support you, can become toxic.

Likewise, friends and family who offer encouragement and ideas on how to succeed can give you the energy you need to work harder toward your goals. Decide which people in your life are lifting you up, and which are holding you down—how you deal with those relationships is up to you, but you’ll need to find a way to interact with the folks who may (or may not) have your best interests at heart.

Find your center

Religion and faith can be a source of inspiration and strength. Attending religious services, or studying your religion’s holy texts, often helps us put certain aspects of life in perspective. Religious studies and services also give people the opportunity to build a community in which they are accepted, encouraged, and counseled on how to deal with life’s obstacles.

You don’t have to be religious to make a deep and spiritual connection with others. If you don’t subscribe to any faith, you can still set time aside to meditate, or to simply let your body and brain relax. Finding your center, finding a place or environment that makes you feel calm and allows you to recharge, can give you the strength you need to get through the ups and downs of your life.

Keep at it—even if it doesn’t work

Taking each of these steps—and committing to them long-term—is a lot of work in itself. But once you’ve set yourself up for success, the only thing to do next is stay vigilant. Stick to a schedule, keep your lists and other visual aids handy, and devote yourself to your goals every day.

One of the most important things to remember is that you won’t always meet your goals the first time around. Rely on your good friends and family to cheer you on, and don’t forget to give yourself a break every now and then if you backslide, or if a plan falls through. Failing or falling short doesn’t spell defeat for you—instead, take it as a lesson and try a new approach next time. Part of meeting your goals is not giving up on them—so, don’t give up.

Setting and achieving your goals isn’t easy—but it’s not supposed to be. Working toward your goals might take months, or even years. But learning to set goals, developing the discipline and self-determination to carry through on your actions, and keeping yourself focused on the big picture will give you more than just what your heart desires. Learning to set goals and achieve them will serve you well in all aspects of your life.

Jesse Langley enjoys spending time with his family, watching athletics, and writing about professional and personal development strategies.  He writes regularly for Professional Intern

Posted by Mike King under Success | 5 Comments »

I’m happy to introduce the first guest post offered here at LearnThis.ca!  It’s on a subject I love (Goal Setting) and from another great blogger in this personal development community. Enjoy…

This guest post was written by Nathalie Lussier, who writes about wealth and personal development as Billionaire Woman .  You can also follow her on Twitter .

Goal Setting Pitfalls

In all of the self-help books and seminars out there, we are always taught how to set a goal. It needs to be measurable, it needs to have a due date, and it should make you stretch. But what happens if we start setting goals that don’t work for us? Could a bad set of goals throw you off course, or worse cause you to lose interest?

Setting the wrong goal can cause or reinforce a fear of failure and also drop your confidence in making progress toward your goals. The same is true when tiny accomplishments add no meaning, they feel empty and make you feel like an underachiever. The right goal is one that will energize you, rather than strike fear in your heart. The right goal will also pique your curiosity enough to get you moving, and it won’t feel like you could reach it without trying.

The best way to think about goal setting for your personal or professional life is to think of your body’s muscles.

If you use your muscles the same way all the time, they will never grow. On the other hand, if you suddenly overextend your muscles, you risk hurting yourself. But you really do need to challenge them enough to make them grow.  The same is true about how you set your personal and professional goals.

Trying to Lose Weight Too Fast

For example: Jessica wants to lose weight, and she decides that setting a goal with a concrete number is the way to go. Concrete numbers really do work wonders. She decides that she wants to lose 100 pounds by the end of the month. Anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight, will realize that this is a very unrealistic goal.

Although most people probably don’t set extreme goals like that, there exist equally unrealistic goals that are considered acceptable. Jessica might have decided that she would eat only cabbage for two weeks. Or that she would exercise five hours a day for the next week. While these may appear to be milder than her original goal, they are both self-defeating.

Trying To Earn More Too Fast

In another example: John decided that he wanted to make $100,000 in the next six months. He’s not quite sure how he’s going to do it. Maybe he’ll use a little bit of law of attraction mojo, and hopefully get lucky at the lottery or on horse betting. Again, unrealistic.

Now Johnny’s goal itself is not an unreasonable one, assuming he has the background for it. Depending on his circumstances, and whether he currently has a form of income that he can leverage. If Johnny already had a $100,000 per-year business, he could try to double his business.

Taking a Reasonable Approach to Goal Setting

Both Jessica and Johnny would benefit from taking a more realistic look at their current lifestyles. One step in proper goal setting is to stop to take stock of where we are. Without truthfully taking a good look at ourselves, we cannot pick the goal that will really get us to grow.  Certainly goals should allow you to stretch as a person and go outside your comfort zone. But goals should not be set so far away that you feel you cannot ever reach them.

The opposite situation could also take place. What if Jessica decided that she wanted to lose only 1 pound between now and next month? Or if Johnny decided that he wanted to make only one dollar between now and the next six months?  It happens that we pick goals that are too easy for us. We think an increase of 10% over last year is all we should aim for. We take the easy way out, so we don’t have to feel bad if we don’t reach our targets.  And at the same time, there isn’t enough satisfaction in that to keep the goal process motivating!

The trick is to be honest with ourselves, and to pick something that will challenge us, without destroying our motivation. You would never go to the gym and reach for the hundred pound weights on your first visit. Likewise, once a weight becomes too easy for you, you should move up to a heavier one.

Warning Signs To Watch Out For

The following is a list of warning signs that you should take note of when you reevaluate your goals.

— Resistance : Even though you chose this goal, you feel it’s not right for you. You don’t want to go through with it, and you feel overwhelmed or unhappy about it.

— Stress : Whenever you think about your goal, you get really stressed out. Maybe you can’t focus, or it feels like there is an annoying uneasy feeling at the back of your mind at all times.

— No action : You can’t get yourself to do anything towards your goal. You can’t even think about starting to take action, your goal just keeps you in this stuck frozen state.

— No belief : You don’t think it’s even possible to achieve your goal. Why bother if you’re not going to make any real progress?

— No motivation : If your goal is too hard or too easy, you might not feel like doing anything to get yourself moving towards it. You might get discouraged, or simply think that your goal is not important enough.

If you’ve ever set a goal that didn’t quite resonate with your current life experiences, you’ve probably recognized some of these warning signs showing up in your own life. Setting goals is just like anything else in life, it takes practice to pick the right goal to get you going.

Parting Words

Don’t be too hard on yourself if the goal that you made for your New Year’s resolutions didn’t work out. It’s always perfectly fine to reevaluate your goals, and there’s no better time than right now.

Nathalie Lussier is passionate about success, and she blogs as Billionaire Woman to share her insights about personal transformation and money. You can Subscribe to her RSS for more personal development articles from the Billionaire Woman.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 15 Comments »

Whatever you believe, you are right in that. Everything is what you believe and everything you do is because of your beliefs. So, if you want to change the things you do (to get different results) then it all leads back to your beliefs. This article covers a few different angles of beliefs but focuses on how you can create, reinforce and use your beliefs to impact your life in a positive way. The beliefs that I am writing about here are core beliefs that drive you with reason to do the things you do. Not simple or dispositional beliefs like statements or opinions on a subject such as “Do you believe a tree makes a sound if it falls where no one is there to hear it?”. These core beliefs are not easily changed and are not formed by a simple thought or guess, they are developed over time.

The Root of All Beliefs

Some people feel that you can develop beliefs by choosing them (I certainly agree with that) and others feel that beliefs come about only through experiences that train you to think about things a certain way, which eventually becomes a belief. Looking at both of these options, there are obvious arguments for both side as to which happens most often, but I look from the perspective of which I want to happen more often and that is certainly creating or choosing my own belief. I don’t really like the idea of waiting for things to happen and then root a belief around that, I much prefer the idea of building a foundation based on decisions and choices that I make. This seems to latch more responsibility and personal accountability to the belief since it is something I deliberately made. So, even if I choose and develop my own beliefs, that is just the root of it, it says nothing of the way that belief will actually affect me. And if I choose my own belief, aren’t I then empowered to use that to steer my actions in a way that’s pleasing to me?

Whether you say you can, or you say you can’t, you’re right. Anthony Robbins

I love that quote from Anthony Robbins. It’s an argument he uses where people look at making an excuse as justification for not being able to do something. If you don’t believe that you can do something, then you can’t, so it’s not really needing an outside excuse, since your own belief is what prevented you from being able in the first place! Associating your beliefs with your thoughts, your mind set and what you say are all critical elements that all affect each other. You can easily see this with individuals with low self esteem for example, they will constantly say they can’t do something and they actually believe that themselves which just feeds a vicious circle as they think it over and over.

You can certainly learn to change that thinking for yourself to avoid being in that circle of thought you don’t want to be in. I recently wrote about how to do that by mastering your state of mind , which will definitely help you in controlling your beliefs so I recommend reading that article if you haven’t before.

Creating Your Beliefs

Beliefs are not usually something people hunt down and look for in life. They are often just felt or learned through experience over the course of time. What I find very interesting though is that its possible to deliberately create your beliefs instead of just waiting for them to show up. There is a lot of value in this and it helps you focus your attention in many areas on your beliefs. Doing this in goal setting for example, helps you focus on goals that are based by your beliefs, which are much easier to achieve and more valuable in your life as these are also the areas that lead to passions. I’ve written in detail about using your beliefs to find your passions , but I believe it works both ways. You an also use your passions to create new beliefs.

Looking at ways to create new beliefs before there is an experiential basis for them can be done with a number of simple steps.

• State new opinions – This helps you to begin agreeing with your own opinion.
• Research areas of interest – Doing this will often give you strong evidence and expert opinion to help you firm up a new belief.
• Question everything – Questioning things leads to a deeper understanding. Deep understanding is a strong foundation for a belief as it is harder to sway a belief that is well known.
• Continuously Learn – Learning new information, improving oneself and exploring new topics can often trigger new beliefs and is wonderful way to create them.
• Share your beliefs with others – Relationships are an invaluable source of new experiences, discussions and great emotions. These are great ways to discover new beliefs about yourself and others.

Reinforcing Your Beliefs

The Placebo Effect is a when the outcome of an action or event changes due to the individual expecting or believing a particular outcome. This is often discussed in relation to health and drug use, where a patient reacts positively from taking a drug that they think will help, even if it is a fake drug like a sugar pill. The Placebo Effect is real and there is much evidence to support its impact. It is also something to take advantage of. Having a belief will inevitably make that outcome more likely, so you should also look to reinforce the beliefs you want and focus on the positive beliefs you have so that they help drive positive outcomes. If you have a lot of negative beliefs, those are just as likely to cause the Placebo Effect but unfortunately, with a more negative outcome.

Look to reinforce the beliefs you want to have and change your beliefs around the ones you don’t want. This is really a case of the classic “Glass Half Full, or Glass Half Empty” mindset. There are many techniques to changing your beliefs and here are just a few you might want to use if your beliefs are not positive or particularly strong.

• Write down your beliefs you want and review them regularly.
• Before bed, review your day and think about each time a positive belief came to mind.
• Share your beliefs with others – This helps discover new beliefs like I mentioned above but its also very useful to identify similar beliefs with others as shared beliefs will definitely help you strengthen them.
• Affirmations work for many people and can help you reinforce existing and new beliefs.
• Turn your negative beliefs into a positive by looking for something you can learn from it, or a new opportunity from a negative event.

Using Your Beliefs

I’ve mentioned a few areas that beliefs relate to and its great to be able to use your beliefs with those. This includes many areas about passions , identifying and setting meaningful belief based goals , and in sharing your beliefs and opinions with others to build relationships. One additional area that I believe is significantly affected by your beliefs is achievement . The more I learn and read about great authors, experts in their fields, leaders and great teachers, the more I have realized that they all share similar attitudes and beliefs about achievement which has made everything possible for them. They belief in the capability of themselves and others and know that change is possible and that they will have an impact on others. These beliefs are exactly what enables them to do what they do best and it inspires others to develop similar beliefs and make their own achievement and success possible as well.

On the other side of this, humans have created limiting beliefs that hold people back in many areas as well. For centuries no one believed that the earth was round and it limited people from daring to explore past known areas from the fear of falling off the earth! People believed it was impossible to fly something heavier than air and this limited progress for decades. Often the unknown or fear of it creates a strong negative belief which not only limits you, but others around you from achieving what is thought to be impossible. There are great examples of this in sports and the human physical capabilities. It is constantly changing nowadays with records and speeds being broken every year by great athletes and competitors using nothing but the human body. It has not always been like that however, as beliefs have changed drastically. For decades and decades, no one thought it was possible for a human to run a 4 minute mile. Hundreds tried and they continually failed for years! Finally, after many attempts, one person eventually beat the 4 minutes mile and it immediately change everyone’s beliefs about the human capability. Over the next month, 30 additional runners broke the four minute mile! This was changed entirely because of the beliefs.

So, knowing what beliefs can do for you and how they affect you, I definitely encourage you to work on your beliefs, change the ones you don’t like, refocus them in a positive way, look to develop new ones in areas you want to achieve and share your beliefs with others to reinforce theirs and your own. I’m sure there are other ways to develop your beliefs and I’d love to hear any suggestions!

Posted by Mike King under Life | 9 Comments »

Since your now reviewing your goals on a regular basis, the next step is to actually complete them and close them out. Completing them at this point is simple, its a matter of keeping to the measure you set for that goal and since you’ve kept it up to date and accurate, the measure should be simple. Its as simple as have you reached the goal yet? Yes or no. If not, then your still working towards it and really still in the tracking and monitoring step. If you have reached your goal, hurray! Celebrate! Take note of what you’ve accomplished and keep your record of this goal with the rest of goal tracking you do. Its a great motivator to be able to review the goal success and achievement from completed goals.

Enhance Your Goals

It may not need to be a specific new goal to set, but it certainly can be, and that is to keep your goal active by enhancing it. This might mean doing some measure again or changing the goal a bit to continue to build on what you’ve already accomplished. Perhaps this is simple to keep whatever you accomplished going and not simply loose it now that you reached that point. If this is a behavior goal (and it really should be) then making it a habit and keeping that accomplishment active is very important. Great goals should accomplish more than just a single event or measuring point and root some kind of change, its just important to ensure that change lives on after the goal as well.

Help Someone Else Achieve a Similar Goal

A fantastic way to keep the result of your goal alive is to help someone else accomplish a similar goal. This might be by encouraging them, being a resource to help teach them, give them advice or perhaps mentoring them in similar goal setting steps. All these things can be very rewarding and helpful for you not to forget your goal or changed behavior as well as being able to help someone else achieve their goals.
I believe that goals are only accomplished by truly driven individuals and practicing goals instead of bragging about them is a lot more valuable and less egocentric. Modesty is important if you want to influence others and convince them of how you feel or what you could help with for similar accomplishments. Tell your story of your goals, but make sure it includes the struggle and story of how you felt while working on them. Your doubts, your beliefs that backed them and even the hard work to achieve it. If you had to extend the goal or change it to make it easier, share that with people you tell, its the best way for them to empathize with the goal setting process and realize its not simple. Its hard work, worthwhile if you believe in it and it can definitely make a difference in your life.

Learn From This Goal

Its wise to review the process you used to complete this goal and consider all the areas that really helped or hindered you to keep making progress. Did you have to adjust your goal often? Why? Take a critical look at where things went well and need to be improved as part of your goal setting process. This is just a starting point, but you do need to explore your process to ensure you have success completing others goals and more in the future. Have you learned anything from your goal that is a new belief you never had? How can that be used to feed progress with your other goals? Make some notes for each goal you complete and review them to continue to improve your process.

Next Step after Completing a Goal

So, now that your goal is off your list you’ve got a couple options. Focus more on your other goals to achieve them as well or look at setting a new goal in that category. Go though the process of identifying goals again and tackle the next area you have a strong belief and desire to change behavior. Add some initial tasks for that goal and ensure you continue to work on others at the same time.

So, I hope you can seriously put some effort into your own goals and that you can make good use of this series. I hope that this is helpful to you as I know this process has been very helpful to me. Please, feel free to ask any questions or comments, I would love to continue to help you accomplish your goals!

That’s All!

Goal Setting Series

Part 1: Goal Setting – Introduction
Part 2: Goal Setting – Setting and Identifying
Part 3: Goal Setting – Tracking and Monitoring
Part 4: Goal Setting – Completing and Close

Posted by Mike King under Success | 1 Comment »

Setting goals isn’t easy. Actually, settings great goals isn’t easy. And that is what you want, great goals. Great goals are goals you really desire, have some passion for and will be happy making progress to meet them. If a goal is more about just the end result and you are afraid of what it takes to get their, its not going to be a great goal and its likely not going to work either. So, its best to look at setting great goals. And this article is about a way to actually go about doing this. I use it and it truly works.

Background to Identify Goals

Everyone makes decisions every day in life and everyday those decisions are based on the pain and pleasure that you believe that choice will lead to. That is exactly what leads to your decisions and its helps to really recognize this and to use it to your advantage in goal setting. The process outlined here is based on using those beliefs and really understanding the impact of them in the sense of pain and pleasure to you which will help to better identify the great goals for you!

Step 1: Brainstorm a Categorized Idea List

You first need to have some ideas and areas to explore your goals. Its great to simply do a brain dump here and write down everything that comes to mind. It helps to keep things categorized, and I use these categories for goal setting:

• Spiritual
• Personal
• Financial
• Career
• Stuff

Spend just a few minutes in each category writing down all the ideas you have as goals in those areas. If you don’t have many, that is fine, just write down everything, its common to have lots in one or two categories and not much in others.

Step 2: Note the Pleasure and Pain Related to Each Goal

What is the pleasure you will experience in achieving your goal, what will it feel like, and how is that feeling going to help you or others? What kind of pleasures will you experience while working to obtain your goal? Note all these in point form under a pleasure heading for each of your goal ideas. This will take some time especially if you have a lot of ideas down. Make sure to think about the pleasure you will experience in getting it, having it and holding on to whatever that goal idea is. Think of how it will affect others in a pleasurable way.

Next, do the same thing but thinking of all the pain that will exist getting, having and holding onto the achievement of each goal idea. Write down the pain caused by the work involved, the risks if they will be painful, the pain you might experience to/from others in achieving your goal.

Step 3: What Belief Backs Each Goal

Use the Pain and Pleasures in a positive way. You can do this by turning a current pain into something pleasurable by stating that the goal will help you to avoid certain pain. For example, this can work well in health and dieting goals since there is SO much pain to get to the goal. Turning this around in a more positive way, lists all the pains that can be avoided like health problems, self doubt and low esteem, feeling better by achieving the goal. Not only that, but if you don’t achieve the goal, then there will be even more pain caused by further health problems, feeling bad about yourself and still not being able to control your health. These can be very powerful driving forces for goals and you should use as many of them as you can.

A goal is about a target or end, not a description of how to get there. Which means that you really need a belief as the basis to build a strong and compelling to do whatever it takes to get to the goal, the target. You need to truly convince yourself why that goal is important to you and have the believe to build on it. A belief in something won’t shatter when one step fails, you don’t stop because of little or slow progress and you won’t easily change your mind from outside influence. That’s the reason why every goal should have some deeper beliefs feeding them. Maybe these are moral beliefs or simply beliefs about happiness. Perhaps they are beliefs about relationships or how others will see you, whatever they are, a belief is powerful and can really drive goals, much more than simply thinking that you want something. Or wishing for something or even being hopeful without a real reason. Those types of goals don’t last when things get tough and difficult to achieve.

Record the beliefs you have that reinforce each goal. You may also have beliefs that hold you back from achieving your goals. Turn these around into positives and set your mind on the beliefs you will have when you reach your target.

Step 4: Rate Your Goals

Put a number from 0-10 beside each of the goals to indicate which ones you want the most, 10 being the highest. Next, make another column and put a number from 0-10 to indicate how easy the goals are for you to achieve them. 10 being the easiest. And finally, rate each one again with a 0-10 on how strong your beliefs are that backs each of the goals, 10 being the highest.

Add up the numbers from each goal which is a score from 0-30. This is an easy way to get on the fast track to picking the great goals, which are the ones you desire most, have true beliefs in and are the easiest to achieve). Pick the top 2-3 goals (highest numbers after adding them up) and make these your focus or primary goals. Put the next 5 goals or so on your list as well which will be your secondary goals. Its much easier to only have one or two goals to focus on so keeping the priority ones you main focus will help achieve them faster. Often some of your goals will relate which is great, since you might be able to work on multiple goals at a time.

So, these are your goal topics. Next is to clarify these goals and finishing settings them.

Step 5: Clarify Your Goals

Clarifying your goals simply involves writing them in a way to make them useful. The method I recommend for this is simple and called MT goals, which stands for measurable and time based goals. Measurable means you must have something you can measure your progress and completion by. Without this measure, a goal is vague and not really useful at all. Measurable is something with a number or a simple yes or no answer. This is critical since most people’s goals fail because they don’t have a simple way to measure completion and progress. Make sure your goal has a way to check for completion. For example, here is one of my goals from a previous year:

Have a reading speed of at least 500 wpm by July 1, 2007.

Its simple and easy to measure. There are software tools, online websites or you can simply count words and test your own speed. The other point in the example goal you can see is the time based part. It states when the goal will be accomplished by a specific time. This is crucial. Without a time, you have no urgency and nothing to push yourself for. State a specific date, not some implied time, or relative time, just pick a single day and decide on that day to complete your goal by.

The simpler your goals are the better. They don’t need to be elaborate, long or complex in any way. You know what they are and you already have the ones with meaning to you and in categories you care about. Try to avoid using terms like improve, increase, develop, reduce, help, change unless you have a specific number attached that you can measure. You can usually just replace those words anyway by stating the target you want, not a relative change.

Goal Setting Series

Part 1: Goal Setting – Introduction
Part 2: Goal Setting – Setting and Identifying
Part 3: Goal Setting – Tracking and Monitoring
Part 4: Goal Setting – Completing and Close

Posted by Mike King under Success | 8 Comments »

OK, I wrote recently about not setting any new year’s resolutions and that was really because resolutions are generally missed, forgotten, ignored and never adjusted. They are not written, planned or even thought about that clearly. They are VERY different from goals. So, I’m going to be exploring goals and goal setting, tracking and following goals for the next several articles and I wanted to just introduce a bit about goals and what a difference they can make in one’s life.

Setting and achieving goals is a process, it is not a single event. I think this is the biggest mistake that people make with goals. They set them, leave them and eventually realize when its way to late, that they didn’t achieve them and voila, they no longer believe that goals work. That is simply not true. Goals do work, but to make them work, you also have to work your goals. There is a process that is needed to attend to them, track them, adjust them and even to identify them in the first place. They don’t just happen!

What are Goals Really Good For?

Plain and simply, goals are the one fundamental key to success and achievement. They are the key to accomplishment in every aspect of life. Living without having and utilizing goals means living in the wake of reaction and circumstance. Its living just to live instead of choosing how to live and why to live. Goals allow a person to focus their energy and life for purposes and passions. They help to add value to a person’s life by keeping them on track with what means most to them and they help a person to better understand themselves and what is important to them. Goals are a way to live with meaning and obsession for what brings the most joy and satisfaction to a person. They are something to express passion for, to motivate you and others who see your determinism and they simply bring to your life more of what you want.

Different aspects of Goals

So, the point these articles is that I’m going to reviews goals in a few separate sections. Its a big enough topic its easier to take in pieces and helpful if you are already experienced with goal setting but need some helpful tips in just one area. Goal setting really is important enough (and there are many blogs and series out there to show this) that it can be the sole focus for an entire site or longer series as well. I hope to cover a few specific things I’ve learned from using goals through my life and I want to present it in a short and actionable way so it is easy to help others enhance their experiences with goals as well. So, I’ve broken down a few separate articles into the following sections:

• Setting and Identifying goals
• Tracking and Monitoring goals
• Completing and Closing goals

I believe goals should be focused on achieving life lasting skills, relationships and changed behaviors or habits, not simply temporary or material things. The reason I believe this is because temporary and material things don’t really bring a true lasting satisfaction to anyone, so achieving them doesn’t build on the value of goals nearly as much as goal accomplishment in those other areas. A goal that is remembered and lasts forever will be much higher valued and will re-enforce the value of goal setting in the first place, even more. So, through these goal setting articles, keep focused on behavior impact of your goals, things you want with a lasting impact, not just some new job, toy, or even some dollar figure. What will last for years to come? What will you be most proud of on your death bed? What will help you leave a legacy to others when you pass on? Those are the types of content for great goals and accomplishing them is truly something to be proud of.

Goal Setting Series

Part 1: Goal Setting – Introduction
Part 2: Goal Setting – Setting and Identifying
Part 3: Goal Setting – Tracking and Monitoring
Part 4: Goal Setting – Completing and Close

Posted by Mike King under Success | 8 Comments »