As I tell my coaching clients, “It’s all too easy to climb the ladder of success to a destination that isn’t worth reaching!” In other words, your goals can only transform you if you’re climbing the right ladder.
What’s important to YOU? It’s your life and it’s got to be your answer. There’s nothing more frustrating and difficult than trying to reach someone else’s goals for you and your life.
The problem is, most people are too busy to even think about the answer to this question.
And if you don’t take the time to figure out YOUR answer or what’s important to YOU, you’ll end up with a busy job and a cluttered life, but you may never have a meaningful career, a fulfilling relationship, lasting happiness, or awesome success. That’s why we spend a significant chunk of time at my Journey-to-the-Extraordinary experience learning the exact step-by-step process of goal setting and achieving. Indeed, that’s what Joseph Caulcrick, a manager for UPS, learned … who flew all the way from Africa to attend my two-day Journey.
Joseph writes, “What a pleasure to meet and work with you after all these years of reading your ‘Tuesday Tips.’ But more importantly, I want you to know that my self-confidence has grown enormously as a result of the techniques you taught us. I’m setting my goals, achieving my goals, and I’m in the process of developing an African leadership center. Thank you so much!”
My next and last public offering of the Journey will be March 31-April 1, 2021. And for the next three days only, you can register at the lowest tuition rate ever.
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► 2. Take stock of where you’re at.
In the process of figuring where you want to go or what goals you want to achieve, it helps if you take an assessment of where you’re at. So get out a paper and pencil. Think about your life during the last 12 months. Ask yourself the following questions and write out your answers. You’ll probably find some areas of your life are in great shape while others are suffering.
Ask yourself some overall questions, such as:
- Am I better off now than I was this time last year?
- Am I happier now than I was this time last year?
- What goals did I achieve in the last 12 months?
- Which goals did I fail to achieve but wish I had?
Ask yourself some financial questions, such as:
- How does my financial portfolio look compared to last year?
- How satisfied am I with my salary, wages, profits or savings?
Ask yourself some work-related questions, such as:
- What progress have I made in my career?
- How am I doing in terms of achievement and making a difference?
- How good are my relationships with my boss? Coworkers? Customers?
Ask yourself some personal questions, such as:
- How fulfilled do I feel?
- Am I growing fast enough?
- How has my personal life changed? For the better or worse?
- How is my relationship with my partner? My children? My friends?
- Have I done the things I wanted to do with my time?
- Have I changed some habits that need changing?
With your answers written out, you’ll be able to spot the places where you need to set some goals to achieve bigger and better results.
Once you’ve done that, you need to write out your goals and Action Steps to make sure you achieve your goals. There’s a whole science to that … which we don’t have time for in today’s Tuesday Tip. But when you do write out your goals …
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► 3. Make sure your goals have focus.
Dr. Denis Waitley writes about the power of focused goals. He says, “The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them … Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.”
Perhaps you remember the Dan Akroyd movie, The Great Outdoors, where a large bear breaks into a cabin. The children are screaming; Akroyd is madly waving an iron from the fireplace, and the bear is slowly backing everybody up the stairs. Then someone blasts a shotgun that merely blows the fur off the bear’s butt and the bear runs off unharmed.
As some of you know, a shotgun filled with pellets won’t stop a bear. As the tiny pellets fly through the air, they spread out and lose their power. The blast is unfocused, which makes it easier to hit a small target, such as a duck or clay pigeon, but it’s almost worthless against a bear. For that you need a rifle that only fires one bullet at a time, where all the energy is focused on that one bullet. The focus is what makes it powerful.
Your goals can be attacked in very much the same way. If you’ve got small goals you want to accomplish, it doesn’t take much time, energy, or focus to finish them off. Even a half-hearted effort will accomplish your goals. But if you’ve got some big goals, you’ll need to use the power of FOCUS. You’ll need to FOCUS on WHAT you’re going to do and HOW you’re going to do it … until your goals become reality.
Andrew Carnegie understood the power of focus. His goal was to make the most money in the shortest time … and then spend the rest of his life giving it away. And that’s exactly what he did … giving away 90% of his fortune, planting 2800 libraries across the United States, and starting Carnegie-Mellon University. He had a dream … to improve the educational system in America. He had a goal to make his dream come true … to make lots of money so he could start libraries and universities. And he put a timeline on his goal … so it all got done in a timely fashion.
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