Achieve Your Goals

I was driving back home with my family on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. My thoughts wandered to planning the New Year ahead. “I feel restless” I said. “My personal goals are not congruent”. Without hesitation my wife asked “are they in line with your core values”? “My core values are still changing and I am not clear about the deepest ones” I replied. “Just imagine what you want people to say about you after you die” she advised. It was the best advice I have ever gotten about deciding on my core values.

For a few moments I thought about my funeral. What do I want people to say about me? What legacy will I leave behind? Or in Robin Sharma’s words “Who Will Cry When You Die”. Will anyone care how successful I was in my job or it is about the role I played in other people lives? Will anyone care how wealthy I was or how my wealth was used to help others?

Instead of being devastated, these thoughts gave fresh new perspective for goal setting. For example, relationships with people are the highest priority. Business and career goals are second. I am not so worried about business goals as such, because successful people relationships lead to business success.

After aligning goals to core values it’s important to align them to our business or job. Connecting our goals and core values to our business gives new meaning to our job. How far can we go if our personal desires pull us in the opposite direction of our business desires? Not far! If our own values match our business values, we will rock.

Formulating goals has four steps:

1. Be specific

It is easier to achieve specific rather than general goals. For example, if you want an MBA, break it into smaller tasks: what university, executive program or standard program, weekends or weekdays and so forth.

2. Set a time line

Our most important goals are often the less urgent ones. Circumstances make them lower priority. Every day we have urgent things which seem more important. If we do not set up a time line, another year will pass by

3. Write down your goals

Writing our goals is a powerful way to convert them from thoughts into a reality. Writing our goals calls us to action.

4. Read your goals every day

Reading goals every day triggers action. This is the art of follow up. The weeks we do not look at our goals because we are too busy are the weeks that we do not progress forward. Try writing your goals on your mobile phone to have easy access to them anytime, anywhere.

What if you do not find time to start new things?

Maria Hughes provides an answer in her book “Life’s 2% Solution – Simple Steps to Achieve Happiness and Balance” (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2006). President of Collaborative Growth, a consulting firm for corporations and coauthor of Emotional Intelligence in Action, Hughes begins with a simple enough premise: setting aside 2% of personal time, or 30 minutes a day, toward examining an inner passion will lead to “a more richly textured life.” This pursuit, according to Hughes, will connect you with a fundamental core self, insure happiness and stimulate emotional and social intelligence, or EQ, which includes self-regard and empathy.

Can you find 30 minutes a day to pursue your goals?