Start with the End in Mind

When creating goals for the future make sure you start out with the end in mind. I'm not talking about the goals that you have allocated along the way; start with the END in mind. Be bold and go for it, after all that is how we truly inspire ourselves to go up through the gears.

So what is the end? Well nobody can ever answer that for you except yourself, as the end destination is a very personal thing. Even if you are trying to get motivated about corporate goals, work goals, team goals or whatever, always start with your 'Dream'. For the object of this exercise I will paint a made up scenario to get the juices flowing. Let's say the dream is to retire in the next ten years on a tropical island near the equator. That's right; make the dream big and one that genuinely inspires you to get excited. Also make it genuine, as a lot of people just pull a dream out of the air and say 'ok I'll be a millionaire'. This is fine but question it, 'do you really want a million pounds or could you just think of nothing else to say?' If the dream takes a few days, weeks, months of exploration, so what, take that time as without it your goals mean zero. Your dream is the marker that you use to direct you home when you get lost in the ocean of life. Without it there is no direction and no purpose. Always have a dream, because without it you can never achieve your dream.

Once you have the dream turn it into a 'Goal'. What do I need to retire on a tropical island? Let's say I'll need £3M in the bank, a fully paid mortgage and a new passport. Is this accurate? I don't know I'm making it up, but you get the picture. Start thinking of all the details that you need in place to make it happen. For the purpose of this exercise we'll say the goal is to make £3M. Of course there are more goals required than this but I'll tell you about the book later, for now I'm going to put this gem of wisdom into an article to give you the greatest value in the shortest time.

Now we have to formulate a 'Plan' to achieve our goal. We need to raise £300k a year (£3M in 10 years), which is £25k a month or £1250 a day (assuming we are working a 20 day working month). The question now is what do I have to do to raise that kind of money today? How much do I have to sell? What business could I go into? How much am I worth? You may already be worth £1250 a day to the right person; you just have to leverage it. When you actually think about this sort of thing you'll be surprised what answers you can come up with. Let's again make an assumption that you are in business as a coach. (Work it to your area/ or an area you believe you could get into). Let's say you charge £250 per hour of your time and sell eBooks, and material on the side through a website. How much business do you have to do each day to cover your overheads? So I'll plan to make £1500 a day, which will give me £250 a day to run my business and live my life. That's £60k a year, of which half is running costs for the business and the other half is my personal wage. This leaves me requiring 6 clients a day or I'll need to shift merchandise to offset any shortcomings I have if I miss my target. Easy right?

The last part is 'Action'. Now I have to activate my plan and work 6 hours a day for the next 10 years, by which point I'll be retired on the beach sipping cocktails with my hot partner on a tropical island. How excited do you think I am about going to work now? You see even the most boring of jobs can be truly exciting if you can directly relate what you are doing today to your overall Dream. A lot of employees use these figures to hit targets at work. It makes sense, people don't care how much profit the MD makes but if the commission gets them a yard closer to their dreams then by hook or by crook we'll exceed any target in front of us. The only problem occurs when the dream is not in sight and employees/ even business owners lose their sense of purpose and start drifting off course.

So that is the simple 4 step plan. Dream - Goals- Plan - Action. It really couldn't be simpler. Now if the question is 'I don't believe that I could ever achieve that' then maybe we shouldn't be talking about goal setting. Perhaps we should go back to the start and have a little talk about that attitude problem of yours.