Is goal setting a waste of time?
Goals allow us the freedom of choice, decision and achieving dreams. Goals are opportunities for us to become who we want to be. Do what we want to do. Ultimately goal setting allows us to draw a path ahead in which we can, and do influence. It’s powerful, empowering, liberating, and fun. This is absolutely worth our time. There is no ability to influence possibilities in our past.
What about the types of goals…do they matter?
There are many types of goals. I like to break them down into three categories: Short term (3-6 months) , long term (6 months to 10 years), and stretch (something that is possible but just out of your reach of thinking you can actually attain it).
Short-term goals are a way to achieve success early in the goal process. These are things that you know you want to get done but often put them off and they rarely get completed. Short-term goals are a quick way to focus your mind on the near term. Something that is close in time and almost “feels” tangible. Short term goals bring a sense of urgency that you must move into action quickly in order to reach your goal.
People who do not typically reach goals they set should keep their goals in short term or one year out, at the most. Why? Because the power behind goals is seeing, feeling, sensing, and achieving possibilities previously thought impossible. Goals are a mode to bring the impossible to the realm of possibility. This is incredibly invigorating and exciting for most clients. Within 12 months client can achieve change in an area that previously was “stuck.”
The key to achieving long-term goals is to have a plan in which they can be achieved. Sometimes when you don’t know how things will happen you have to create time in your day to thinking about how. It can be as simple as asking an open-ended question like: How can I pull this off? How will I be able to do this one? How will this look when I am done?
Stretch goals are incredibly powerful and most often connected directly to our dreams of who or what we always wanted to be or become. Stretch goals have a way to transforming people at their very core. They get to see how incredibly powerful they are as people and they see with this new belief anything, ANYTHING, is possible.
Will you have more success with a financial goal vs a lifestyle goal?
Success with goals is directly related to how committed you are to the feeling you created about your goal. Feelings are often the most powerful force within a goal. If people are not connected to the feeling of a goal, they are unlikely to achieve it. Financial goals are good because they are very tangible and specific. Specific goals are key to success because they affirm your ability to “win.” When writing a goal, it’s important to make it so you absolutely know when you achieve it. The deadline allows our mind the urgency it needs to problem solve and yet allows us the space in which we can shift our emotional being so we can accept the goal when we reach it.