goal-setting-guide

1 1 PERSONAL GOAL SETTING ANightingale-Conant Special Report Introduction Welcome to this Goal Setting Mastery Guide, which has been exclusively devised to help you achieve the success you desire. In this guide you’ll find everything you need to define your goals in five key areas of your life – health, relationships, business, finance, and spirit. Then, using a seven-step process on the worksheets you’ll find at the end of this report, you’ll be guided to the achievement of your goals with laser-beam focus. Why is goal setting so important? In a study undertaken by Dominican University, a diverse group of participants was randomly divided into five smaller groups: Group 1 was simply asked to think about their short-term goals. Group 2 was asked to write down their goals. Group 3 was also asked to write down their goals and formulate action commitments. Group 4 was asked to write down their goals, formulate action commitments, and send their goals and action commitments to a supportive friend. Group 5 was asked to do all of the above, plus include weekly progress reports in the information they sent to a friend.. The results of this study demonstrated clearly that those who wrote down their goals accomplished significantly more than those who didn’t — and that those who made a public commitment to achieving their goals and established a method of accountability accomplished even MORE. Whatever your background, education, or level of ability, the power of personal goal setting is clear. As this study and the experiences of millions of people have proven, the ability to set goals and to make plans for their accomplishment is the “Master Skill” of success. With this single skill, you gain an achievement advantage that’s unrivaled. By simply having clear written goals, and focusing on them every day, you’ll run circles around a genius who is unsure and uncertain about what he or she really wants. 2 Perhaps the most important principle in goal setting is what is often called idealization. It is so simple and yet so powerful. All it requires is a pen, a pad of paper, and a few minutes of your time. In idealization, you stand back and look at every part of your life and then decide upon the ideal outcomes that you desire. You ask yourself, “If everything were perfect in this area of my life, what would it look like? What would I be doing? Who would I become? What would I have?” A person with goals makes progress on even the roughest road and in the face of the most incredible difficulties. A person without goals just goes back and forth even though the road is smooth and the course is clear. A person with goals is like a sailing ship with a compass, a map, a rudder, and a skilled person at the helm, sailing straight and true to a port of his or her own choosing. A person without goals is like a ship without these things, simply rocking back and forth with the tides, making no progress in even the calmest sea. As Zig Ziglar says, “You must become a meaningful specific rather than a wandering generality.” To achieve all that you are capable of achieving, you must develop a clear sense of direction. You must decide exactly what you want in every area of your life. Perhaps the most impor- tant question that you will ever ask and answer, one that returns over and over again, is this: “What do I really want to do with my life?” What is it that you really want to do with your life? Most people are unclear and confused about the answer to this question, and that’s why most of them accomplish far less than they are truly capable of. In the following pages, you will discover some of the most effective ways to establish your own answers to these questions. Questions and answers that will have a profound influence over your life today and in the years to come. I wish you every success in the achievement of your goals. Vic Conant Chairman, Nightingale-Conant 3 PERSONAL GOAL SETTING Section 1 The only true goal is happiness In study after study, going all the way back to Aristotle, we find that what most people want, above all, is to be happy, however they define that quality. Happiness is the common denominator of all people and all human behavior. Everything we do is an attempt to achieve our happiness in some way. In fact, you are only really successful to the degree to which you can achieve your own happiness in life. If you achieve everything else in life, money, home, fame, success, and so on, but you do not achieve your own happiness, to that degree you have failed. In fact, a good measure of how well you are doing in life is to ask yourself what percentage of the time do you feel that you are genuinely happy? The answer to this question will tell how far you have come and how far you still have to go. The 5 ingredients of happiness There are five ingredients of happiness that are common to every person, every- where, under all circumstances. The first of these is high levels of health and energy. Most people put their health above all other considerations, and this is wise. If you have your health, you have everything. But if you lose your health for any reason, to that degree you are failing at the great game of life. The second ingredient of happiness is loving relationships with your family and others. The more people you have in your life who love and respect you, and whom you love and respect, the happier you are. The third requirement for happiness is meaningful work, work that makes a differ- ence and that you do well. We are put on this earth to be useful in some way, and we are only happy when we feel, deep inside, that what we are doing is somehow helping others in a positive way. The happiest and most fulfilled people are those who dedicate their entire lives to doing something that uplifts and enhances the lives of others. 4 The fourth ingredient of happiness is financial freedom.We live in a material world. Food, clothing, shelter, transportation – everything has to bepaid for in some way. We can be happy only when we know that we have enough money to pay for everything we want in our lives. One of your chief responsibilities as an adult is to attain your own financial independence and financial freedom. We will talk about how you can accomplish this at some length later in this report. The fifth ingredient is higher levels of inner peace and spiritual understand- ing.Without these qualities, we can never achieve true happiness and long-term peace of mind. When you have high levels of health and energy, good relationships, meaning- ful work, financial independence, and inner peace, you will be genuinely happy most of the time. In this report, you will learn how to achieve more and more by deciding exactly what it is you want and then working toward it every day. 5 PERSONAL GOAL SETTING Section 2 5 types of goals You need a variety of goals to be happy and to keep your life in balance. Specifically, in this report we will deal with goals in five areas: 1. Personal goals 2. Family and Relationship goals 3. Financial goals 4. Business and Career goals 5. Health and Energy goals Each of these goal areas should fit like a piece of pie into a pie dish to form a fully rounded and completely balanced life. Personal goals The first type is your personal goals. These are the things that you really want for yourself. They are perfectly selfish goals. They are the things that make you happy. They are the opportunities to use your unique talents and abilities in a way that gives you deep inner satisfaction. As the result of our upbringing, combined with myths and misunderstandings, many people feel that they do not deserve good things to happen to them. While we are growing up, we are often told that we are being selfish if we set our own personal happiness as a key measure of our success. We are often told that our job in life is to make other people happy, and if we get a little bit of personal happiness on the way, we should consider ourselves lucky. This has confused people for centuries, yet they eventually discover that you cannot give away something that you do not have. You cannot give away money that you don’t have. You cannot give away love that you don’t have. And you cannot give away happiness if you don’t have happiness of your own. In fact, the most wonderful thing you can do for the most important people in your life is to be a genuinely happy person. 6 Even in the case of a divorce where children are involved, psychologists have determined that the child is much better off emotionally living with one parent who is happy rather than two parents who are angry. Often, mothers feel that their entire identity should be wrapped up in the lives of their children and to have goals of their own while their children are growing is somehow not acceptable. But more and more, we are finding that a mother is a far better parent when she has a specific goal or interest that gives her a focus and an identity apart from the family. Because of this balancing influence, she will be a far better, happier, and more effective mother than if she had no out- side goal at all. What are your personal goals? Allow yourself to practice idealization. If you had no limits at all on your life and time, what would you want to be, have, or do? If you had all the money that you required, what would you want just for yourself? It may be a sports car, a trip to Morocco, or the completion of a course of study. Whatever it is, make up a “dream list” for yourself and your personal life. Write all the things you would have and do if you had no limitations at all. Rather than being unhappy or dissatisfied with your existing situation, create an ideal future vision of what your life would look like if it were perfect in every way. Go to the end of this report for your Personal Goal-Setting worksheet. Family and Relationship goals The second type is your relationship goals. For many people, these are the most important of all, especially if you have growing children. What are your family goals? If you could be, have, or do anything with or for your family, what would it be? There are two types of goals, tangible and intangible. Tangible goals are things that you buy or build. For your family, these can include a home, a boat, a car, a vacation trip, clothes, toys, or anything else that can be purchased. Everyone has a list of tangible goals that they want to acquire for their family. Intangible goals, on the other hand, are qualitative. These are things that require time, caring, consideration, warmth, and emotion. They cannot be bought with money. They are indispensable and irreplaceable in a happy family life. And these are the benefits or things that your family wants more than anything else. 7 People often get caught up in their work, spending long hours, leaving home early, getting home late, and often working weekends. They invariably convince themselves they’re doing it for their families. But if you ask, in almost every case, their families would prefer that they worked less and spent more time at home. Achieving a healthy balance between tangible and intangible family goals is essential. Organizing and reorganizing your life so that you can spend more time with the people you care about is one of the most important skills and goals of time management. We will discuss this at some length later. Make up a dream list with your spouse and your children. Sit down together and play a game of “Let’s Pretend.” Invite them to tell you every single thing they would like to have included in family life. What would they like more of or less of? What would they like you to stop doing or start doing? Ask the members of your family if there is anything that they would like you to change, in any way. Remember, your family is your most important customer. You are dependent upon them, and they are dependent upon you for each other’s health, happiness, and well-being. You must take time on a regular basis to be crystal clear about what it is they want and need from you. You must, then, like any good businessperson, do everything possible to satisfy your most important customers in the very best way possible. Go to the end of this report for your Family and Relationships Goal-Setting worksheet. Financial goals The third area to concentrate on is your financial goals. As Earl Nightingale so succinctly put it, “You become what you think about most of the time.” So the more clearly and intelligently you think about your financial life and your financial goals, the better a financial life you are going to have. Basically, goal setting involves determining where you are now and where it is you want to end up sometime in the future. The planning process requires that you figure out how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to go. 8 That’s it in a nutshell. With regard to your financial goals, you begin by determining your exact financial situation today. You can do this by answering these questions: Exactly how much are you worth today? What are your assets? If you had to sell everything that you own today, how much cash could you generate? You then determine how much you are earning today on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis. How much did you earn last year and the year before? And, especially, how much do you want to be earning next year and the year after? How much do you want to be earning in five years? 10 years? When do you want to retire, and how much money will you need to have throughout your retirement? Between what you have today and how much you will need to retire, exactly how much more will you need? How much will you have to save and invest each year, assuming an average return on your savings and investments of about 10 percent per year, to be able to retire at a particular time? How much will you have to save and invest each month and each year to reach your ultimate financial goals? The great tragedy in the Western world is that the majority of people do not think very much about long-term financial security. Another part of your financial goal setting has to do with insuring yourself against events over which you have little or no control. You need life insurance, health and medical insurance, dental insurance, car and personal liability insur- ance, home and fire insurance, and whatever other insurance is dictated by your life and your lifestyle. Never make the mistake of gambling with your financial life by attempting to get by uninsured or underinsured. By the way, when you talk to financially successful people, they have answers for every single one of those previous financial questions. They know how much they are worth, how much they earn on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis, how much they want to be worth when they retire, and exactly how much they have to put away to achieve it. They are very thoughtful and prudent re- garding every aspect of their financial lives. As a result, they are never broke. They always have money in the bank. They enjoy a far higher standard of living than the average person, even though their incomes are very much the same. Your goal is to join the financial elite by thinking and acting the way they do. 9 Go to the end of this report for your Financial Goal-Setting worksheet. Business and Career goals The next set of goals has to do with your business and career. Perhaps the most important decision you ever make, aside from marriage, is your choice of a career. It is absolutely essential that you do something that you enjoy and for which you have a natural talent. The greatest time waster in life is not telephone calls or unexpected interrup- tions. It is spending years of your life in a job or a career for which you are unsuited. It is one of the major reasons for unhappiness, frustration, alcoholism, problems in relationships, and ultimately failure in life. What sort of a business are you in today? What sort of a business would you really like to be in? If you had an unlimited amount of money and you could choose any job or career in the world, what would it be? What sort of people in what sort of careers do you most admire? What sort of business and career activities fascinate you when you see them or hear about them or read about them in newspapers or magazines? Apply zero-based thinking to your current business or career. If you were not currently doing this, knowing what you now know, would you start into it again today? If the answer is no, then your next question is, “How do I get out of this field – and fast?” The way you can tell if you are in the right job is that you really enjoy it. You want to be good at it. You are eager to learn more about it, and you continually take courses to get better in your field. You very much admire the most success- ful people in your chosen field. When you are not at work, you think about your work, and you can hardly wait to get back to it. If none of these conditions exist in your work, you might give your future career some serious thought. Go to the end of this report for your Career and Business Goal-Setting work- sheet. Health and Energy goals The next set of goals is your health goals. You start setting your health goals by deciding exactly how long you intend to live. Most people have never thought 10 of this at all. If they do think of this, they decide that they want to live to be 100 years old or older. But for most people, these are pipe dreams. They are com- pletely detached from reality. The average life span in the U.S. today is about 75 years for men and nearly 81 for women. This means that 50 percent of peo- ple will die below those ages. And by looking at the health habits of many peo- ple, you can quickly determine who is going to pull down the overall averages. Gallop Organization studies of successful people concluded that intelligence was a critical factor in success. But as the experts examined the factor of intelli- gence, they found that many people with average intelligence had succeeded greatly while others with exceptional intelligence had done poorly. What was the difference? The experts concluded that intelligence is not so much a matter of IQ or academic scores. Intelligence is more a “way of acting” than anything else. What this meant was that, if you act intelligently, you are smart. If you act stu- pidly, you are stupid, irrespective of your IQ. The question then became, “What is an intelligent way of acting?” And the answer they came up with was quite simple. You are acting intelligently when what you are doing is moving you toward a goal that is important to you. You are acting stupidly when what you are doing is moving you away from one of your self-determined goals. In other words, to be a highly intelligent person, what you have to do is to decide exactly what it is you want, and then only do those things that move you in the direction of your own goals. Refuse to do anything that does not help you to achieve something that is important to you. To every activity or request for your time that does not move you toward your goals, just say no! With regard to your health goals, you probably want to be thin, fit, trim, full of energy, with no pain, illness, or discomfort. You want to live a long, healthy, happy life with all the energy and agility that you need to do all the things you want to do and go to all the places you want to go. These are probably your overall health goals. How can you tell if you are acting intelligently? By simply examining your behavior relative to your health goals. By eating carefully and well, by exercis- ing regularly, and by taking good care of yourself physically, in every way, you are performing at genius levels in terms of your health. On the other hand, any- thing that you do that may interfere with your living to be 80 or 90 or 100 years old is, by your own definition, by y