4 Methods of Setting Goals

This is the long version of the Four Methods of Goal Setting.

Transcript

I’m going to talk about goal-setting today and I really try to make a short video about goal setting and is pretty much impossible for me. It’s really hard to get under two minutes so I’m just going to go for a long one.

I am incredibly productive, generally, and people often ask me “How do you do all of that? How did you run two businesses as a single mom and keep your sanity and also volunteer on top of all of that?” and I will tell you a big part of that has been goal setting.

So I am a huge fan of goal setting and envisioning. I do it in all kinds of different ways and I do it throughout the year, so I’m going to tell you about some of those ways.

Method 1 – Artistic – Use a “Vision Journal”

First off, I have an art journal and in that art journal, I often will do a vision sort of artistically and I got this idea from a friend. You have a vision journal and she would do a journal versus just one piece of paper which people often talk about like a vision board that they’ll put up on the bulletin board, instead, I have a good vision journal. So that’s one idea.  I do that maybe once or twice a year.

Method 2 – Set Goals on your birthday

The other thing I do is I often set goals on my birthday and I set goals for as many years as I am. So yeah, I’m getting up there. My Goals are 40-something goals last year and this year and people again will ask me, “how do you set like 40-something goals like that’s impossible!” and I think nope it’s not impossible. The trick to that is to break them down.

So let’s say I have a goal of redoing the bathroom. So it’s not just redoing the bathroom. It is:

• Goal 1: Look on Pinterest and find bathrooms that I love
• Goals 2: Decide on a design
• Goal 3: Pick the vanity
• Goal 4: Pick tiles
• Goal 5: Pick the paint
• Goal 6: Call a contractor or call a handyman and find someone to help me to this
• Goal 7: Get three quotes
• Goal 8: Pick one
• Goal 9: Start the project
• Goal 10: Finish that five percent (which nobody ever finishes)

So you can see that that will break down into 10 goals. So once you break down your goals like that, they become much easier to accomplish. It’s not this big huge goal that sits on your board and never gets done. It is like: let me break this down so that you feel progress and you feel movement towards that goal and that in itself will help motivate you towards that goal. Okay, so that’s one method idea.

Method 3: Timeline Goals

The other one I do is that I set goals for six months, a year, two years, and five years. I don’t go further out much than five years. I used to when I was younger in terms of envisioning my life but now I find that so much happens in five years, so much changes that it’s not really useful for me to go beyond five years.

I set those goals in four different areas: so there’s business, spiritual, family, and health.  Those are four areas that are important to me and again, those are long-term goals so I will envision what are those and I write them as if they’ve already happened. So it is not like in six months I will do this, this and, this. No. It is in six months, I have sold my company, bought a new car and I’m really enjoying riding around in it. That’s goals as if they already happened and I will do that again six months, a year, two years, and five years out then I take those goals and I record them. So just a little voice app on my phone. I like Dropbox Vox, you can record the file and it automatically uploads it to your Dropbox and then you can listen to that wherever you go. I like to listen to those in the morning when I walk the dog. They run about 10 minutes or so, so I read those goals to myself out loud, and then at the end, I put supportive statements so things like “You are worthy, you are wonderful, you know I love you” those kinds of things and I find that I look forward to hearing the supportive statements at the end of the goals when I’m walking every morning and I listen to those three or four times a week so it keeps them fresh.

I know someone else I brought a whole other blog post about this and it was a millionaire and he said he listens to his goals and he reads his goals while he’s exercising. So he wants adrenaline associated with them and that sounded great to me, a great method but whatever works for you. You got to find what works for you.

Method 4: Describe your perfect day in the future

A final method of goal setting for me is to describe a day in the future as in the present tense and that’s my perfect day in the future. So I’ve done that also a couple of times. So that looks like you get very very detailed when you do that. That looks like this: I wake up in the morning and have plenty of time to do about 20 minutes of yoga and about 10 minutes of meditation and this feels good and peaceful to me. Then I go over and I make a cup of tea and I make my breakfast and I sit down and eat my breakfast and review what I have to do that day then, I get ready and I head off to work in this work that I love and I’m seeing clients in my office and I’m helping them get better and that feels really good and then after that, I pick up the girls from school and I come home. So it goes on and on and on like that and you’re really describing the perfect day. You can even describe your office setting and the sunlight pouring in. You can get as detailed as you like on that.

So those are a couple of different ways of goal setting. I really encourage you to do that, it is so helpful for your life and for your loved ones if you set those goals in all kinds of different areas.

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Dr. Liz