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| Why Are Goals
Important?
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Just what is it that you want to accomplish? Just what is it you want from
life?
The way you accomplish things, the way you get the things you want, is through
Setting and Achieving Goals!
Why are goals important? Why do you need to set goals? There are three primary reasons for setting goals:
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To make sure we go through a thinking process about what we
want to do in our lives, and not just succumb to the directions given to
us through advertising, etc. |
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To make sure we get what we want from life |
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To save time |
If you have not set your goals, you will not achieve what you want in life;
you probably don’t even know what you want out of life! There is nothing
wrong with this, but you cannot achieve something unless you can articulate
it. In addition, you will find yourself wasting a lot of time making
decisions that could be made very quickly. (See How To Use Your Goals,
below) |
| What Do I Need
To do To Set My Goals? Part 1 - The Caveat! |
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Before we begin…
Make sure you are setting YOUR goals; the things YOU want
to achieve, not the things the world tells you that you want to achieve.
Why am I making this distinction? Because, every day, you
are bombarded with thousands of messages telling you what you want. These
messages are expertly crafted to attempt to get you to buy a product, or,
more often, an image, that you really do not want. These messages,
usually advertisements, present an unrealistic picture of the world and
represent false goals. (Please do not think that advertising is
necessarily bad – it is necessary to sell products and to help you and I
get the best values in the market place.)
However, most advertisements present an image. An
advertisement may show a model using a certain brand of shampoo as
having not only beautiful hair, but a fabulous figure, as she is being
taken to an exotic location and dancing the night away. Now, the message
is simple; buy the product, and you will be swept off your feet by your
soul mate, taken from your rather dull life into a life of beauty and
endlessly exciting romance. And you notice that the people in beer
advertisements are invariably young and beautiful. They open the
bottles of beer, and the party begins. Or the people in the wine
commercials are always wealthy and beautiful as they sit in
their designer clothing in their perfectly designed homes sipping wine.
In short, if you buy these products, your life will suddenly turn into a
party, and you will suddenly become sophisticated and beautiful.
If you believe that people will befriend you, admire you,
and love you because of your appearance or possessions, then you are
setting yourself up for a disappointment. It will not happen. People
will befriend and admire you because of who you are, not because of what
you own or look like. |
| What Do I Need
To do To Set My Goals? Part 2 - Let's Do It! |
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In order to set
your goals, you need to realize that there are three essential points to
every goal. Without these points, goals are just dreams or wishes.
And wishes are fine for fairy tales, but not so good for accomplishing
things in your life...
Now, in order to function effectively, we need to make sure
that our goals and objectives function effectively, we need to make sure
that they meet the following criteria:
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Our goals must be achievable.
If they are impossible, we will give up before we try them. They should
be challenging, but to set too high a standard is not realistic and will
only lead to disappointment and giving up all goals. |
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Our goals must be specific. We
must say exactly what we want to achieve. A vague “I want to be
wealthy” will never be achieved, because we really have never defined
what it means to be wealthy. If you say “I want sufficient wealth to
retire at age 55, and that amount is $500,000”, that is a specific goal. |
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Our goals must be objectively measurable.
If it is to have a healthy body, we need to decide what having a healthy
body means to US. To many of us, it would mean, for example, that our
weight was within the Body Mass Index (BMI) set by the National
Institutes of Health, our blood pressure was at or below the normal
level (140/90), etc. Note that these are objective criteria. |
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Our goals must have a completion date.
We need to set a date by which we expect to complete our goals. Do not
despair if you do not meet the date. You can always adjust schedules.
But having no date means that you will never achieve it. |
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Our goals must be written. If we do not
write our goals down, we will never achieve them. |
Now, how do I
decide what my goals are? This can be much tougher than it looks.
After all, there are so many aspects of our life and the world around us.
Looking at a blank piece of paper can be pretty intimidating. Some
ideas to get started include:
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Accomplishment Speech. Close your
eyes and imagine that you are giving a speech in front of five hundred
of your relatives, friends, and business associates. In this speech,
you have to tell these people the ten things you have done in your life
that you feel have been your greatest achievements. Since this is
taking place in the future, they can be things that you would like to
accomplish in the future. |
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The
Influencers. List the five people who have influenced
you more than anyone else in your life. List who they were, and what
they did to influence you. |
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Favorite
Activities. List the five activities or things that give your
pleasure or that you enjoy doing more than anything else. |
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Write Your
Epitaph. We all get one line to write on our tombstone,
our epitaph. If you could have anything written on your tombstone, what
would it be? |
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| Making Your
Goals Work |
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In order to make
your goals work for you, you need to use them and keep following them
every day! Here are some methods that will help:
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List your goals
on a 3x5 index card and review it at set points every day - for example
when you get up, before you go to bed, and after meals during the day.
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Every day, make
a list of what you have done that was in accomplishment of your goals.
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Don't be afraid
to share your goals with others. Share progress and failure to make
progress. (See next section)
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When you have to
make a decision and are not sure of the correct answer, pull out your
goals and decide which answer leads to your goals. That is the
correct answer. This will save a lot of time wasted in indecision.
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| What Happens If
I Miss A Goal? |
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This is an
important area, because it is one of the reasons that we so often have
trouble in our society meeting our goals.
MISSING A GOAL
IS NOT FAILURE
If you miss a
goal, it is because of one of these reasons
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Your goal was
not realistic - you need to revise the goal and try again
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Your method to
achieve the goal was not effective (the burger and french fry diet didn't
work!) - you need to review your method of reaching your goal.
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Your goal is no
longer valid - conditions have changed (learning to use outdated software
is not helpful) and your goals is no longer relevant. You need to
change or delete the goal.
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Your priorities
have changed - so must your goals
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The bottom line
is that as we and the world around us changes and evolves, our goals must
change and evolve as well.
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| Questions About
Goals? |
| Please feel free to
contact us for further information.
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