I am so happy that you decided to join me today. My last episode, I mentioned some of the circumstances that I hear about and talk with people about on an almost daily basis. Unfortunately, these have become common circumstances, and finding yourself in the midst of any of them could possibly be holding you back from living your best life; holding you back from loving your life – normal, everyday struggles. If you missed it, please go back and listen to it here: Start Living Your Best Life Now.
I also mentioned that there are 5 components to making and setting goals. When you go through these 5 steps of goal making, you are actually more likely to hit that goal. You may wonder, “What does creating the life that I love to live have to do with goals?” Well, I’ll tell you… It has everything to do with it.
If you don’t make a plan and just allow things to happen to you, then, well, things will definitely happen to you; however, it won’t be the things that you want to happen.
Zig Ziglar said, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” If you decide that you are ready to create the life that you want to live, but you don’t take active steps toward creating that life for yourself (because, like I also said last week, “it IS up to YOU”), you will not achieve it. You will not accomplish your goal if you are not “aiming for it.”
Today, we’re going to go through and talk about the 5 components to setting and accomplishing your goal of creating the life you love to live.
Let’s quickly remember what these 5 components of goal setting are.
Remember… your goal must be:
1. Specific/Simple/Significant
2. Measurable/Meaningful/Motivating
3. Achievable/Attainable/Announced/Authored by YOU
4. Relevant/Reasonable
5. Time Bound/Time Sensitive
These are known as SMART goals. S-M-A-R-T
If other people want you to change, but you don’t; then you won’t change. I don’t have a goal for you to love your life, I have a desire for you to love your life. You need to have the goal for YOURSELF. I cannot form that goal for you. I can only give you a nudge in the right direction through encouragement and presenting some tools that you can use to achieve your goals.
If you have a goal this year to change your attitude, situation, or just become a better person, YOU are the only person who can achieve that goal. For some, you already have a really good life circumstance, job, family life, or whatever, but you have a really bad attitude about it. Some of you may need to make some changes to the life you’re currently living, while others of you just need to change your attitude about the life you’re already living. Just changing your attitude can change your life. Just like Major Payne said, “You have a little attitudinal problem, needing some readjustment.” What you need is a little attitudinal adjustment.
Some of you just need a little nudge to get your hinies off the couch. It’s not up to your spouse, son, daughter, cousin, friend, neighbor, or dog to pick you up off that couch and push (or shove) you towards your goal. It’s up to YOU!
For some of you, you don’t need a shove out the door. You need to stay right where you are and start creating the life that you love to live…right where you are; maybe inside your own home. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed and depressed at home, maybe your home is what needs a change.
There was one point in my life where I was overwhelmed with stuff; lots and lots of stuff! The more stuff I had, the better. You’ve heard of retail-therapy, right? Well, this was definitely me, and I can definitely say that I came by it honestly. I mean, my mom would literally check me out of high school just to go to the mall for that retail fix that so many of you are familiar with (come on…be honest with yourself). I almost failed my last year of high school because I missed so many days in my afternoon classes.
What I saw was basically a, “He who has the most stuff wins;” that the more stuff you have, the better, and because I believed this, as a gift to myself on my 18th birthday, I opened up a credit card at a retail store called Learner (which later became The Limited and is now New York & Co.) Yes… I apparently could not wait to start accumulating debt all in the name of STUFF. I think that I literally thought that it was my right-of-passage.
It took me until my late 30s to realize that all this “stuff” was and still is a HUGE stress-factor for me. I always felt stressed and overwhelmed as a kid and teen, and although there were a lot of other factors involved, I finally identified in my late 30s that a lot of the problem was STUFF.
I realize that I am getting a little off topic at this moment, but I am seriously passionate about stuff (this time, the lack of…), and I can’t wait to share my story with you about how I came to realize that I had a “stuff-problem.”
Ok… Back to goal making…
Let’s talk about the 5 goal components.
Specific/Simple/Significant – The first component of a goal is that your goal must be specific. It must be stated clearly, and it must be well-defined. It needs to be so clear and specific that you cannot confuse its meaning. In my opinion, this first step may be the most important step in making a goal for yourself. A good way to measure if it’s clear enough is to go down the list of interrogative words that you learned in grammar school – The “Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why.”
Who is your goal for? Who will it benefit? Who will help me achieve this goal? Who will be involved?
What do I want to accomplish with my goal? What methods, boundaries, or systems do I need to put in place in order to accomplish my goal? (Or here’s a good question, “What would happen if I DIDN’T accomplish my goal???)
When do I plan on starting my goal? Make sure you ask that question with “When do I ‘plan’ to start…” and not “When do I ‘want’ to start… or When do I ‘hope’ to start… “ By planning it, we are more likely to actually start it or do it, rather than just “planning on” starting it. Also… When do I hope to finish my goal?
Where can my goal be accomplished” Where is my goal located – right where I live, or will I need to move? At my current job, or will I need to find a new one? Also, needing to move or find a new job in order for you to accomplish your goal will set some new goals within your goal, which leads me to the next one…
How will I accomplish this goal? How will I achieve every step of my goal? How much will my goal cost me? How realistic is this goal? How relevant is my goal?
Why do I want to accomplish this particular goal?
Measurable/Meaningful/Motivating – You must commit to your goal. Your goal must be so meaningful to you that you are motivated to achieve it. This is where you need to get down and dirty with your emotions. You need to seek deep down into your inner-self and find out what motivates YOU to achieve YOUR goal. This does not include motivations from other people. Your mother telling you that you need to graduate college or call her more, or your best friend telling you that you need to lose weight (you may really need to lose weight, but it needs to be YOUR goal; not your friend’s goal for you), or trying to keep up with your neighbor who just bought that new car and now you need one too, should not be on this list. This is YOUR list. This is YOUR goal. YOU are changing YOUR life; not someone else’s, and other people cannot change it for you. In fact, we may find ourselves blaming other people for us not achieving our goals. In some cases, this MAY be true, but in most cases, it’s just an excuse for us to not have to work for it.
Achievable/Attainable/Announced/Authored by YOU – Your goal needs to be written down. This allows us better chances of actually achieving our goal. People who write down their goals and describe them in detail are more likely to achieve their goal. The more detailed you are about your goal, the more likely you are actually going to achieve it. Something happens in our brain when we write down our goal. As you write down your goal, you will see it begin to play out in your head as if it is already happening. This actually helps push you toward putting the steps into action and achieving that goal. Have you ever heard of or seen a vision board? I think that that applies here in the “writing it down” process. You are able to visualize your goal with the words that you use or even the pictures that you use.
This also helps keep you motivated and on the right track; not to mention accountable to yourself. Every time you see that vision board, you will either be motivated out of obligation to yourself for achieving your goal or motivated out of inspiration from actually seeing what you can accomplish. You can even add pictures of what you think your life may look like after you achieve that goal. Make sure your goal is realistic, achievable, attainable, and actually makes sense. If your goal is to live in Alaska, but you absolutely cannot stand the cold weather, and prolonged lack of sunshine causes you to go absolutely psycho (I am speaking from personal feelings here), you may want to rethink your desired geographical location.
Also, I’m just gonna throw this in here… if your goal is just to “be happy.” you will never achieve that goal. You might want to rethink that goal and make it more specific. We are human, and it’s not possible to experience happiness all the time. What happens when we get frustrated or angry? We may suddenly think that we haven’t achieved “happiness,” and that will be false.
Our human bodies are made to experience countless emotions, so we cannot experience “happiness” or any single emotion, for that matter, 100% of the time. If your goal is just to be happy, you may feel like you’ve not achieved your goal if you suddenly feel sad, or mad, or angry. We were made to feel all of these emotions; not just one.
Experiencing all of these different emotions are what actually gets you to your goal in the first place. If you don’t feel at least a smidgen if discontentment, you will never have a need to change your life and achieve your goal. These other feelings are what drives us there. They are what drives us to change. You need to figure out what gets you more toward that feeling of happiness. For example, and going back to my previous example, if you feel happy when your house is clean but sadness when it’s not, figure out how to keep your house clean more often. Maybe you need to simplify your belongings, declutter, buy a broom, but don’t think that this is a one-time deal. Your house WILL get dirty again. It may even possibly get cluttered again. You WILL experience those negative, unhappy feelings that a dirty, cluttered house brings you, but you eventually learn to recognize when these emotions are rising up, and you learn to just…clean your house.
Relevant/Reasonable – Your goal must be relevant to YOU and YOUR situation. It must be relevant to YOUR life. It must be YOUR goal. I cannot stress this enough. I feel that even if the other 4 goals are not met, you this one MUST be true! YOU are the only one who can set and achieve YOUR goal. Your mom cannot set your goal for you – even though she will try. (I am a mom, so I know this first-hand.) Your spouse cannot set your goal for you. It’s up to you to take that walk or to make good food choices throughout the day when you’re alone. Your spouse or significant other cannot eat right for you. They cannot put good things in their body and expect it to benefit you. The only benefit you may gain from that is the increased energy that your spouse will get from treating their own body well. That can be what literally pulls you off the couch to get you going, but still, they cannot take those steps for you, you have to do it! It. Is. Up. To. You!
If your goal is to write more or blog more, you cannot expect anyone to write it for you. If you have a goal to pay off debt and become debt-free, you can’t expect anyone else to close your credit card accounts, cut up your cards and stop living on credit for you. If your goal is to work less and spend more time with your kids, no one else can do this for you. No one can live a more purposeful life for you. It is totally up to you.
Time Bound/Time Sensitive – You’ve heard the phrase, “Slow and steady wins the race,” right? Well, that may be good for building wealth but maybe not for goal-setting. In order to obtain your goal, you need to be able to get there the quickest way possible. However, this should not be considered a “quick-fix” way of getting there. This is what Dave Ramsey calls “Gazelle Intense.” If your goal is to get out of debt, slow and steady may win the race, but you are definitely gonna get sidetracked and distracted along the way. You need to get laser-focused, acquire a bit of tunnel-vision, get on fire and get there the quickest way possible.
You can be 20 years old and plan to retire a millionaire when you’re 60, and that’s ok. That’s more than ok. That’s a slow-n-steady kind of goal; however, that cannot be your only goal. You have to make smaller, shorter-term goals along the way in order to get there. You can’t just set that goal and expect that when you’re 60, you suddenly wake up a retired millionaire when you haven’t set smaller, shorter-term or time-sensitive/time-bound goals along the way.
Set a goal, set a time limit, achieve that goal. Set a bigger goal, set a time limit, achieve that goal and so on. Then, BAM! You’re there; having achieved a million smaller goals along the way, but don’t stop! Set another one and get to it!
If you need help achieving your goals, creating the life you love to live and just learning how to become a better person along the way, make sure you hit that subscribe button and tune in to listen to my next episode where I will reintroduce my 8 Simple Steps to Loving Your Life.
