Goals

There’s an interesting thing about goals you have to bear in mind that nobody talks about:  Wherever you set your goal, you also potentially set your misery.

Goals by their very nature are hard to reach.  It’s not an easy thing to become successful.  It’s not an easy thing to practice something every day for years, waiting for some future result.  It’s not an easy thing to set a lifelong target of wealth, and yet have no money today.

Success, wealth, happiness.  These things don’t arrive overnight.  So by setting your goals, you by default will know that you haven’t reached them yet.  If you measure your progress, you will know you’re not there yet.  If you plateau, you will know you are not moving forward, and your focus will be on the fact you do not have it yet.  And that’s hard.  Hard to look yourself in the mirror every day knowing you’re not there yet and keep going.  This can be a miserable experience.

That also goes against the very thing you’re trying achieve.  The journey to joy, or wealth, or freedom, should not be a miserable one.

So what’s the key?  You need to measure two things.  You must know how far away from your goal you are, but also, even more importantly, you must measure how far you’ve come from where you started.  You need to document your starting point, so you can know in your heart that the steps you are taking are not only taking you down the path towards your goal, but are putting distance between the you of today, and who you were when you started.

If you can measure the progress from where you started, you can know in your heart that you are going to get to your goal one day.  Looking back, is just as important as looking forward for goals.

Goals can be hard to achieve, but what happens if you don’t set goals?  It is so easy in life to make a decision when you’re 20, just out of college, that impacts you for the rest of your life.  You get a job, and follow a path, and that path has a certain level of income, a certain expectation of status, and a certain expectation for life experience.

All of a sudden, you can wake up when your 45 and wonder what happened to the last 25 years of my life?  Where did they go?  You just coasted along on the path someone else designed, and here you are.  Right where they expected you to be.  But are you where you want to be?

Now the good news is it’s never to late to change, and to set new goals.  Or if you’ve never done it, set goals for yourself for the first time.  I originally had a problem with the word goal, because that symbolizes some finality.  You’ve reached something and stopped.  So if you prefer, you can call it a milestone.  Something you reach, but you know there’s another one ahead.  Because life is a long road with many milestones along it and the more you learn, the more you may want to follow a different path.

Whatever you call them, you have to set them.  You have to take a moment, take the time and set the goals for yourself.  Set those milestones.  Set the direction you want to go in because if you don’t do it, someone else will.

So how do you set the goals you want to achieve?  It’s simple.  Dream a little.  Think about the possibilities for your future.  Talk to your parents, your spouse, your kids or your friends.  Think about what you want, what you want to be known for, and something you want to be remembered for.  Think bigger than you ever thought possible.  Something that is outrageous, outlandish, and crazy.  These are YOUR goals, and nobody can tell you what you can or can’t do with your dreams.

One of the greatest challenges I had in my life was setting goals that were too small.  I achieved them all by the time I was 35.  So what do you do then?  I had limited my own self by setting small goals.  So it took me years, but I finally realized my goals should be huge.  Life changing.  Not only for myself, but for those around me.

So my first goal, and purpose, is to enrich the lives of those around me.  That is a worthy purpose, and these thoughts are milestones on that path.  Another goal is to make 100 billion dollars, and another is to own the island of Lanai in the state of Hawaii.  Those are just a couple of huge things I want, and I’m nowhere near them yet.  But I’ve come a long way towards them when I look back.

Let’s get practical.  How do you go about achieving your goals?  Here are the exact steps you can take to get you on the path, and keep you on the path to getting everything you want.  This is a process I learned from my mentor Warren Rustand.

The first thing you do is set your 12.

What are your 12?  They are your three greatest priorities in the four main areas of life: Personal, Family, Work / Business, Community.

For personal goals you might want to lose 10 lbs, get your degree, and save $10000 by the end of the year.  For family, you might want to have a better relationship with your mother, spend more time with your kids, and keep in touch with your extended family.  For work / business, you might want to have recurring profit goals for your business, or take the next step in your career and get that promotion, or finish that course to improve your skills.  And for community, you might want to get on the board of a local charity, to give back by donating some of your time and help at the local food shelter, or adopt a family for the holidays, and give them something they never had.

These are just some examples.  Set your own.

Now you have your 12 goals.  Pause for a moment and envision those goals as being on a long path.  You know there are things you have to accomplish on that path that go in a logical sequence, that one thing follows another.  Take a moment and write down all the milestones along the way that you would have to hit to achieve that goal.

Maybe you have to lose 3 pounds by the end of next month, on your way to losing the 10 lbs.  Or you need to schedule in weekly calls to your mother, or you have to book your exam for that course you’re taking, or you have to find a charitable cause you want to donate your time and expertise too.

Whatever those steps are, write them down.  All of the milestones for each of your 12 priorities.  If possible, make them measurable.  Call my mother once a week on Wednesdays at 7PM.  Save 1000 per month.  Finish that course in 3 months.

Now depending on how big you are dreaming, you can take another step which is to bucket them into approximate time to completion.  Simple buckets like less than a year, between 1 and 3 years, 3 to 5 years, 5 to 10 years, or 10+ years.  Write down next to each goal the bucket they are in.

What you’ll find as you get older is 10+ years goes by faster than you think.  And not only that, people often overestimate what they can achieve in a year, but underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years.

For clarity, you can have more than 3 goals in each area, and as you accomplish different things, you can focus your efforts on those other items on your list you didn’t focus on initially.  Odds are there are some short term things you need to fix and get on track before you can start working on those longer term goals you’ve got.

Back to the 12 priorities, and all the steps you have to take to make them real.  You have your goals with the buckets of time to achieve them by written next to them.  Now look at all the milestones and work backwards by writing down due dates that those milestones have to be accomplished by.

Using the weight loss goal again, you could say plan all next week’s meals by the end of the day on Sunday each week.  Sunday the 12th is the date this must be done by. This gives you something to track.  It might be eat smaller meals, more frequently.  Or track the calories for each meal.  Or work out 3 times a week.  Or go for a walk every night.  Track it.

Take all of them, for each of your priorities, and put a due date next to each and every milestone.  Just write down all the dates.

Now that you have your 12 priorities, and the milestones to reach those priorities with their due dates, you take them all and re-write them into your calendar on the dates they are due.  If you are going to call your mother at 7PM every Wednesday, put it in your schedule.  If you’re going to study for 2 hours a night to complete that course, put it in your calendar.  If you’re going to spend more time with your kids, put it in your calendar.

This is the first step in taking control of your life and making sure you are on the path to achieving your goals.  You have defined what your goals are, what the milestones on the path to that goal are, you’ve figured out what you have to do, by when, to hit those milestones, and you’ve scheduled them all into your calendar.

This process, and these calendar items, are what is now your core schedule.  These are your priorities.  Things you must accomplish in your life to achieve everything you want to achieve.

Now lets be honest.  The first time you do this, you’ll suck at it.

Some things you’ll underestimate the amount of time required, and for others, you’ll overestimate the time, and be done sooner.  These are both great things, and you have to be forgiving of yourself when this happens.  The process is not perfection, the process is about progress.  Progress towards the goals you have defined in living the life you want to live.

Let me put it to you this way.

The first time you got behind the wheel of a car, you sucked.  Pretty bad.  But now, you’re much better at it.  You can listen to the radio or talk on the phone and not even remember your commute.  But you got there, safe and sound.  It’s the same with this.  Over time it will become second nature to you to plan out your life and put your priorities first and before you know it, you’ll reach your destination, whatever that destination might be.

The hardest thing for me was actually sticking to the schedule I had set.  It’s ridiculous when I write it down. These are my goals, decided by me, that I want to achieve, but I came up with excuses as to why not to do them.  I pushed back against my own planning.  Really, really dumb.  It took me a long time to realize that it was me I was pushing back against, and if I decided I mush achieve those goals, then I must do what I’d scheduled.

That’s when I realized we get what we must.

That’s an interesting way to think about things.  There are a number of related theories, including we can handle any ‘what’, if we have a big enough ‘why’.  You know plenty of stories about people enduring amazing trials and challenges, and coming out on the other side victorious against all odds.

But some people give up, give in, and don’t go the distance because it’s too hard.  Because they don’t have the drive.  They didn’t continue because there was some suffering.  You can’t blame them for giving up.  The motivation wasn’t there.  They didn’t have a strong enough desire.  It wasn’t a ‘must’ for them.

When you put something in your brain that you must do, you will do it.  Why?  Because your priorities will shift, your focus will sharpen, and you will put every last bit of your energy into accomplishing, or doing that thing.  I have seen it up close, and it usually results from some traumatic experience, often around money, that happens when people are young.

This forces them to become successful, no matter the cost.  It forces them to do what must be done to be successful.  It’s a visceral thing.  If you must attend college because you want to change your circumstances, you will.  If you must provide for your child, and that means working 2 jobs, you will.  If you must provide for your family so they never have to experience being poor like you did, you will.

People often have challenges in setting their goals because of their upbringing, or their self worth, or not knowing what they want in life.  I had this very same problem.  I set goals, accomplished them, and then what?  I was lost for years not knowing what to do.  They were material goals.  Getting stuff.

That’s when I changed my approach and realized that chasing stuff was the wrong thing to do.  I mean you have to have stuff to live.  You need an income, a place to live, and the freedom to do what you want without worrying about the next penny.  Those are baseline things.

But the real key is looking at yourself in the mirror.  Taking a long, hard look at who you are and asking yourself one question: Are you living to your fullest potential, or is there some room there for improvement?  You should ask yourself this question because when you are setting goals, it should all be in the context of reality.  I might want to be President of the United States, but I was born in Canada.  Never going to happen.  So is that a realistic goal?  No.  But I do have the potential to be the most me possible.  I have innate abilities, and I have learned skills, and I have amazing traits.  So do you.

So rather than set a goal of having a house, or a car, or a cottage, or a vacation, why not set a goal to be the best version of you possible?

The best version of you possible is different for everyone.  Another way to phrase this is one’s success should only be measured against one’s own potential.  Do you have the potential to be the best artist in the world?  What would it take to be that artist?  Do you have the potential to be the fastest reader?  Or the leading authority on something?  The best investor?  The best teacher in your school?  The best mom?  And it’s not even about being the best in the world, the country, or even your house.  It’s about being the best you.

Now you know I’m big on measurement, so how do you measure this?  How do you set goals around becoming the best you?  That’s simple.  You look at who you want to become, and start learning to become that person.  Then, once you have spent some time on yourself, working on yourself, you look back and see how far you’ve come.

This all comes back to the one main thing about goals.  When you think about it, it’s not about getting the thing.  It’s not about owning that car, or that house, or whatever it might be.  It’s really all about who you have to become to not only get that thing, but to appreciate having what you have all along the way.  Up to and including that thing.

The goal of goals is to become more, not to have more.

Let’s take money for example.  I know plenty of people who are assholes, but are rich.  Now you might say that’s not fair.  Really, it isn’t.  But they may have gotten there by a particular skill, or a gift of being born into the right family.  The thing is, all money does is amplify who they are.

Now there’s nothing wrong with wanting, or having a lot of money.  Some of the greatest people I know are also rich.  It’s who you are that matters, because amazing people who are rich do amazing things.  Those people who aren’t amazing, still just aren’t amazing.

I look at it this way: what type of person would have the things you want to have?  Are you that person?  What areas of yourself and your life do you have to improve on to become that person.  Because once you are that person, you will have the things you want to have.

So all you can do is set goals, understand who you have to become to get the things you want, look back at how far you’ve come, not only how far you have to go, and go get it every day with discipline and consistency.