Goal Setting

I got a question from a reader about goal setting, so here are some ideas that may help. They are adapted from Franklin Covey, John Maxwell, Andy Stanley, Steven Barnes, and a number of business CDs not available to the general public, plus some of my own thinking on the topic.

One general note: as you are going through the entire goal setting process, you should also try to find someone who can act as a confidante or mentor to help you work through the steps. We frequently find ourselves in mental ruts that we cannot break out of. A fresh perspective can be very helpful to get you to think outside the box and find new options, opportunities, or directions.

Before setting any goals, it is important to identify your core values. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, because we all have things we know in our minds we should value, but they may not be the things that really matter to us in our heart of hearts. I recommend blocking a full hour undisturbed, and sitting down with a pen and paper (NOT a computer!), and start writing down the things you value.

Once you think you’re done, you’ll have gotten through the more superficial layer. Dig deeper: what are the things you are most proud of? Of all the things you’ve done, what gives you the greatest satisfaction? When your mind wanders, where does it habitually go? If you discovered you were going to die tonight, what things would you most regret either doing or leaving undone? Who or what would you be willing to go to the mat over or to risk your life for? If these last questions seem overly dramatic, you don’t understand core values. They are the things that matter the most to you, the things that matter more than you do. Fear of loss is a much greater motivator than hope of gain, so understanding those fears is an important clue to what you truly value.

Once you have that done, think about your long term dreams. If you could design your own life, what would it look like? To help with this, think about it in terms of categories: relationships with God and with important people in your life; career; and personal life, including health, personal growth, experiences, and lifestyle. What would you do if time and money were no object? Where would you go? Who would you help? What would you learn? Where would you live? What charities would you support? If these are really the things you want long term, they should connect directly back to your core values. Understanding this connection can provide powerful motivation for you to develop a plan to turn those dreams into a vision and direction for your life.

If you are a Christian, what we’re really exploring here is your sense of calling and understanding what it is God made you to be and to do to fulfill your part of His plan for the world.

At this point, you might consider drafting mission and vision statements for your life. The vision statement talks about your purpose, values, and direction; it’s the big picture of where you believe your life should be heading. The mission statement is an overview of how you’re going to get there. It addresses the question, “what do I do,” while the vision statement addresses, “why am I here,” or even “who am I.”

These are the steps that look at the big picture. They may seem rather abstract, but if you want to put together goals that will help you long term, you need this big picture to show you where you want to go. It will also pay to revisit these issues annually to determine if they do in fact reflect your values and your growth. You may find your priorities shifting or clarifying, and you want to be able to use that to adjust what you’re doing.

Next, we need to get to some more specific, rubber meets the road issues. List all of the roles you have. For example, I am a husband, a father, a college professor, a free lance writer and teacher, an entrepreneur, …. Once you have the list, ask yourselves which are nonnegotiable, which line up most closely with your values, and which are moving you in the direction of your vision. Hopefully there will be some overlap. These are the roles you need to concentrate on the most. If your current job doesn’t make the list, you need to start thinking about how to transition into something that does.

I would suggest that the most important roles to think about are your relationship with God, your relationship with your family, your relationship with your community, your professional life, and your personal growth. These are key areas for everyone, though the specific details will vary from person to person.

In each of these areas, ask yourself where you would like to be in a year: what will your relationship with God, your family, and your friends look like? Where would you like to be professionally? What do you want to learn or do for your own personal development? (I would also suggest that you think about these same areas five and ten years from now, though for most people that’s too much of a stretch. If you can do it, great; if not, stick with the one year time frame this time around.)

Your image of where you would like to be a year from now is your goal in each of these areas. Find a phrase that encapsulates the idea, and write it down with a date you want to accomplish it. You will be reviewing (and ideally rewriting) this goal daily.

Last step: identify actions that you can take daily that will move you toward your goals. Beware of dramatic changes or silver bullets: they rarely work. Your life is made from your daily habits, so if you want to accomplish your goals, you need to do this through developing new habits. Small, easy steps are best, without trying to do too many things at once. It takes 21 days to develop a habit, so I suggest the following approach:

1. Identify the most important step you can take daily for each of your goals. (In some cases, these might be weekly, such as getting to the gym three times a week if you want to get into shape, but you get the idea.)
2. Put these steps into your routine and stick with them for a month. Write and review your goals and the steps daily to keep you on track.
3. At the end of the month, assess whether each step has become a habit. If it hasn’t, do it for another month. If it has, ask if you’re making satisfactory progress toward your goal, then determine if you simply want to keep with that habit or add a new one for the next month.
4. Ultimately, you’re looking to reach what John Maxwell calls the Rule of 5: no matter how big the goal, if you do 5 key actions toward it every day, you are all but guaranteed to reach it eventually.

And that’s it. It’s a longer process than you may have wanted, but the early steps, which are in many ways the most difficult, are actually the most important and lay the foundation for everything else. I’ve adapted this from lots of other people, and you may decide to modify it for yourself, but the basic approach is solid and will help you clarify, set, and meet meaningful goals for your life.

A few books to help you along the way:

• John C. Maxwell, Put Your Dream to the Test, Today Matters, and others
• Jeff Olson, The Slight Edge
• Andy Stanley, Visioneering

Franklin Covey has some excellent resources as well.

Monthly checkup, and a progress report

It’s been a busy week, so I didn’t get my end of the month checkup on goals written last week. So here it is, a bit late.

We’re far enough into the year that if you haven’t been working consistently on your New Year’s resolutions (if you made any), you’ve probably either given up on them, not made any progress on them, or forgotten them. That’s OK, but if you want things to improve in your life, you need long term goals and some kind of plan to reach them.

For those of you who were reading in December when I wrote up my suggestions for resolutions, this will be familiar ground. For those of you who weren’t, here are three very specific suggestions for dealing with your long term plans.

First, write them down, ideally every day, but at the very least review them daily. More on this at the end of the post

Second, find a small step you can take daily (i.e. a habit you can create) that will help you move toward the fulfillment of each of your goals. It takes three weeks to develop a habit; give yourself a month, then reassess to see if the habit is established, and if so,  if it’s helping you toward your goal and if you want to add a new one this month.

Third, share the goals with someone who can hold you accountable for your progress.

If you’ve been doing this, have you seen any progress? My bet is you have. What additional steps can you take this month to improve?

A personal report: I have been writing down my goals and intermediate steps to reach them daily, pretty consistently since January 1. Some of them have involved breaking habits that have been in place literally for years. Within about two weeks (less than what it normally takes to develop a habit!), the habit was gone, and I haven’t relapsed since.

The only thing I did differently was write my goals out each day, focusing on the positive outcome I wanted and not the negative action I wanted to lose.

I’m a skeptic when it comes to techniques; I’ve tried too many things to believe in magic bullets. And it’s possible that there are other explanations for the change. But this seems to be working well for me, whatever the reason, and I see no good reason to risk stopping.

The takeaway is that if you’re having problems reaching goals or breaking habits, try writing out the positive outcome you are looking for daily. I also included what I saw as a necessary step to achieving the long-term goal. This only takes two or three minutes at most total for all of my four big goals. Try it for a month and see if it doesn’t help you move forward.

First Month Checkup

We’re coming to an end of the first month of 2012. For those of you who set goals for the New Year, how are you doing? It’s time for your first month’s checkup.

• Did you write down your goals and review them daily (ideally rewriting them)? If so, have you discovered anything new about them? Did you modify them in any way, or are you happy with them the way they were? If they need refinement, no would be a good time to think through how you should adjust them.
• Did you put in place a new habit for each of your goals? If so, is the habit well established by now? If not, keep at it for another month. If so, is the habit helping you make reasonable progress toward your goal? Do you want to stick with that habit or add something else to it this month?
• Did you enlist others to help you be accountable for your goals and habits?

 Remember, if nothing changes, nothing changes. If you want this year to be better than the last, you need to get on it now, doing the small things that compound to make big changes over time. If you haven’t read Olson’s The Slight Edge, you really should. And remember the quote from Aristotle: “We are what we do habitually. Excellence, then, is a habit.” Let’s strive for excellence in all areas of our lives.

One Week In

We’re a week into the New Year. For those of you who have set goals for the year, how is it going?

• Have you written them down?
• Have you reviewed them daily?
• Have you shared them with anyone and enlisted their support?
• Have you taken steps each day toward your goals?

Remember, you need to take action if you want this year to be better than last year. If nothing changes, nothing changes.

The actions don’t need to be dramatic—in fact, dramatic changes are the ones least likely to stick. Small, daily decisions create the habits that let you accomplish big goals.

I leave you with a thought from Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.” Let’s go for excellence in all areas of life this year.

From Mind to Heart

Who you will be in five years is determined by the media you consume and who you associate with. These two areas are always either helping you move forward or holding you back because both shape our thinking about the world and about ourselves.

Media does this by putting images, words, and ideas into your mind. Electronic media in particular bombard us with images and information at a pace that does not allow us to think it through or analyze it. Instead, it embeds itself in our minds and from there into our memories, thus shaping our souls.

If you want to grow your mind and soul, pay careful attention to media. Reading is a particularly important tool for personal grown, since unlike other media, we read at our own pace, which allows us to ponder, reflect, meditate, think, and therefore to direct our intellectual growth more effectively than other media.

Because we are relational beings, the people we hang with may be the single most important factor in determining our self-image, our outlook on the world, and our values and priorities. They shape the mind and the soul even more powerfully than media.

Although it's difficult and potentially painful, you should also evaluate your associations if you're interested in personal growth. If the people around you are not helping you grow, you need to find people who will. This doesn’t mean abandoning your family or old friends, but you will need to consider carefully how much influence you want them to have over your life and adjust the time you spend with them accordingly.

Our words are also important. The things we hear ourselves say pass into our subconscious, which is programmed to take what we say seriously. For this reason, affirmations and verbal confessions are important tools for personal growth. If you doubt this, read the book of Proverbs and notice how much is said about the tongue and our words.

Our mind provides food for the soul as we spend time pondering ideas and allow them to captivate our attention, as we build meaningful relationships with other people, and as our words filter into our subconscious. Over time, these activities  will capture our imagination, shape our values and convictions, and inform our will to pursue those things that we truly value.

From there, the soul moves the heart, the center of our life. Probably the best way to discover our hearts is to ask ourselves what makes us sing, what makes us weep, what elevates our spirits. I suspect most people don’t know how to answer those questions, but they are worth pondering.

In the end, our hearts will be molded around the real values of our souls, whether for good or ill. As Christians our hearts are a battleground between what Paul calls the “flesh,” which refers to the on-going effects of original sin in our lives, and the Spirit. Our hearts are thus divided, which is why the Psalmist prays,  "unite my heart to fear your name." (Ps. 86:11)

So for New Year, I suggest you join me in resolving to cultivate our whole being, starting with our bodies and minds which will then shape our souls and hearts, and to do this out of the love of God; to strive to know and obey His commandments from the heart; and to find ways to live out our love of Him through the love of our neighbors in practical acts of service and in our professional lives.

Write down concrete goals in each of these areas, review them daily, and commit yourself to putting small, specific actions into your daily schedule to help you to achieve them. If you do, next New Year will find you much more the person you were meant to be, and you will have set a course for a much more successful and satisfying life.