Three Steps for Positive
Goal Setting
by Dr. Donald E. Wetmore
As I conduct my Time Management Seminars all
over, my audiences consistently tell me they want more out
of life. Almost everyone I speak with has a yearning for improving
several aspects of their lives. They have dreams and goals
about their future as yet unrealized.
Many come to the end in life with those visions
unrealized, pictures in their minds only.
Achieving goals helps us to get the "want
to's in our lives. Life ought to be more than just achieving
the "have to's".
I offer three important tips to help increase
the probability of achieving your dreams, getting more of
what you want in your life.
1. Put your goals into writing. There is something
powerful about writing out what you want, getting your dream
out of your head and on to a piece of paper. It then seems
more realizable. It's a stonger affirmation of what you are
working towards rather than having a vague, wispy notion floating
around in your head.
An even stronger tool is to prepare a goal
scrapbook. Nothing fancy. Get a three-ring binder and fill
it with notebook paper. Then get a picture of each your goals
and paste them into your new goal scrapbook. You ca go to
the car dealer and get a brochure of the new car you want.
Visit a travel agent and pick up brochures of your ideal vacation's
destination and add that. Clip a picture of your dream house
out of the newspaper's real estate section and add this as
well.
Then, each night, review your goal scrapbook
and see a picture of what will surely be coming to you. It's
like viewing a crystal ball and seeing your future.
2. Quantify your goals. Many do not get what
they truly want in their lives because they are too vague
about what they want. It is not enough to say, "I want
more money" or "I want to be rich". Instead,
if you write, "I want $10,000", you now have a clear
target to shoot for.
3. Set a deadline. Did you ever set a New
Year's resolution and never achieve it? Most people have.
And most people fail to achieve their dreams because they
did not include a deadline with their goal. Deadlines move
us to action.
When we fail to include a deadline for our
goal, when we commit to achieving it "as soon as possible",
the goal winds up in our "as soon as possible" pile
of things I will do another day, which is probably never.
Why? Because we all too much to do and not enough time to
get it all done. The items that have deadlines for completion
tend to bubble up in priority and importance so that we take
action and achieve them.
Having written out the goal, placed a picture
in our goal scrapbook, quantified it, and set a deadline,
we can now break that goal down into its little component
pieces so that achievement becomes realistic and manageable.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with
a single step. No goal achievement is a leap across some huge
canyon. Many are intimidated and driven away from going after
what they really want in their lives for fear they will have
to take a giant leap across that canyon and, hey, what if
I don't leap far enough? Disaster.
Let's say you have a goal to get an additional
$10,000 in savings two years from today. Make up a picture
of your new bank statement two years from now showing the
additional $10,000 in your account. The goal is in writing.
It is quantified and a deadline has been set. Now you can
break that goal into its little steps for achievement.
To get $10,000 over the next two years requires
getting an additional $5,000 per year. A year is made up of
twelve months, so that means you need to get approximately
$400 per month. A month is made up of four weeks, so that's
$100 per week. And a week is made of, let's say, five business
days. That's $20 per day. (I have not added in interest to
these calculations just for simplicity.)
I don't know about you, but the notion of
going out in the world tomorrow and getting an extra $20 is
a whole lot more realistic and certainly a whole more doable
than getting $10,000. Getting the entire $10,000 is the leap
across the canyon. It scares me. $20 is the single step. That's
something I can handle. Now the goal seems realistic and is
realizable.
But until you write out your goal, quantify
it, and set a deadline so that you break it down to its small
steps, it will forever appear to be too big a stretch and
therefore unattainable. But every time you follow these three
steps and break the goal down, you will always find that you
have within your control what it takes to accomplish that
next step. And once you begin, you are on your way!
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About the author: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore Professional
Speaker Productivity Institute Time Management Seminars 60
Huntington St., P.O. Box 2126 Shelton, CT 06484 (800) 969-3773
(203) 929-9902 Fax: (203) 929-8151 Email: ctsem@msn.com
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