Meaningful, Achievable Goals

You have your lists of wants, focused in the different areas of your life. You have checked them against your values, and each supports the other. Now, how do we turn those “wants” into meaningful and achievable goals?

Today, take one of your Growth Wheel sections. Perhaps one that is always important to you is Family. If you travel a lot, it would be very easy for you to lose contact with your children or perhaps your grandchildren, or your siblings. So, one of your goals would be to spend time with each of them, and for them to know that you are always available.

Now, it is important to understand the difference between “want to” and “do.” “Wants” set up the “do’s” in your life, and your goals will need to be written to reflect the “do.” So, if your goal is to spend time with each of your sisters or brothers, you would write your goal statement like this: “I spend quality time with each of my brothers and sisters. I make sure they all know how important they are to me.”

Suppose that you are a single mother, trying to balance work and home and family. It is a difficult road to travel, one filled with many choices. You want to spend as much time with your family as possible, but you have to work in order to provide a roof over their head and food on the table. Guilt kicks in as you attempt to do it all. Now, thinking of work as a “have to” causes additional stress, which can shadow your work and home time. To remove the “have to” from work would help a lot, so your goal statement would be written as, “I love the work I do, because it affords me what I need to spend time with my kids.”

One final tip: When you write out your “wants” and goals, make sure you write them in the present tense – the future as now. Take out the “going to” and replace it with “I am.” You are seeing your future as if it has already happened, creating that gap we talked about earlier. The gap is important; without it, there is no energy to change.

Take each of your Growth Wheel “wants” and turn them into goals for the future, written in the present tense. You have come a long way in these past several days, and have started on the path to a clear picture of 2020!

Well done! Keep it up!