As I conduct my Time Management Seminars all over, my audiences consistently tell me they want more out of life. Almost everyone I speak with has a yearning for improving several aspects of their lives. They have dreams and goals about their future as yet unrealized.Many come to
end in life with those visions unrealized, pictures in their minds only.
Achieving goals helps us to get "want to's in our lives. Life ought to be more than just achieving "have to's".
I offer three important tips to help increase probability of achieving your dreams, getting more of what you want in your life.
1. Put your goals into writing. There is something powerful about writing out what you want, getting your dream out of your head and on to a piece of paper. It then seems more realizable. It's a stonger affirmation of what you are working towards rather than having a vague, wispy notion floating around in your head.
An even stronger tool is to prepare a goal scrapbook. Nothing fancy. Get a three-ring binder and fill it with notebook paper. Then get a picture of each your goals and paste them into your new goal scrapbook. You ca go to car dealer and get a brochure of new car you want. Visit a travel agent and pick up brochures of your ideal vacation's destination and add that. Clip a picture of your dream house out of newspaper's real estate section and add this as well.
Then, each night, review your goal scrapbook and see a picture of what will surely be coming to you. It's like viewing a crystal ball and seeing your future.
2. Quantify your goals. Many do not get what they truly want in their lives because they are too vague about what they want. It is not enough to say, "I want more money" or "I want to be rich". Instead, if you write, "I want $10,000", you now have a clear target to shoot for.
3. Set a deadline. Did you ever set a New Year's resolution and never achieve it? Most people have. And most people fail to achieve their dreams because they did not include a deadline with their goal. Deadlines move us to action.
When we fail to include a deadline for our goal, when we commit to achieving it "as soon as possible", goal winds up in our "as soon as possible" pile of things I will do another day, which is probably never. Why? Because we all too much to do and not enough time to get it all done. The items that have deadlines for completion tend to bubble up in priority and importance so that we take action and achieve them.
Having written out goal, placed a picture in our goal scrapbook, quantified it, and set a deadline, we can now break that goal down into its little component pieces so that achievement becomes realistic and manageable.
