Forget the Goals, it's February already!

Forget the goals it’s February already!

Let’s make a promise to ourselves

If you are like most people at the end of last year or at the beginning of this you will have thought about what it is you want to achieve in life, love and business during 2017 for yourself, your loved ones and your workforce. Some people just make a resolution, some clued up people set a plan and a lot of people discuss the power of a goal.

So did you set yourself a goal for 2017 and beyond? And if you did, how’s it going so far?

There are schools of thought now where as business is so fast paced and you can disturb the marketplace from a standing position that you should only set a goal for the next 3 months or 6 months maximum as if you are to achieve something and take massive action then it would be better to be there in 3 months than 3 years, surely? As well as the fact that this is so possible in today’s marketplace it also keeps you motivated and on track as if your goal is to lose some weight this year then you still have 11 months to do it so probably won’t do it at all.

So if you did set a goal or two then it may be worth revisiting it today and if you didn’t, well welcome to the revolution, grab a pen and your thinking cap and hold on tight.

Goals are for other people.

The first thing people from all walks of life can do is choose, choose to change, choose to do better choose to be amazing, to be extraordinary, your life can change on a sixpence and you can do anything you set your mind to do if you really want to, you just have to know where you are going, you don’t even at this early stage need to know how to get there, you just need to choose.

Most people who want to move forward sometimes decide now is the time and they take control, some people are avid goal setters and do these exercises year in year out and still don’t always get the result they want as they can be derailed for multiple reasons and at any point in the year. Saying that we need to make a start so I would say that we start where any great goal setting manual starts and that is to set specific, measurable and achievable goals that stretch us and motivate us to get the correct procedures in place to help us achieve the goals we set.

If you cannot paint a vivid picture of where you wish to be then how can we identify how to get there?

There are tomes of goal setting literature out there and I have read many and taken bits that work for me so I am just going to lay out some very simple things that I have found useful and hope that you do too, these exercises help to clarify your definite direction, only 3% of people have written goals they work on daily and they are the most successful in every area of life. At the end of the post I will help you cast a magic spell on these goals to make them unbreakable.

Let’s review or rewrite those goals!!

Questions to ask.

When you are goal setting you should be constantly asking yourself questions that will clarify your direction like:

• What do you really want?
• Where do you really want to go?
• What do you really want to do?

And ultimately.......Who do you really want to be?

A great way to think about this is to ask,

“What do I want to be remembered for?”

After a long and fruitful life what would you like people to say about you at your funeral? And

“What if I had all the time and money in the world what would I do?”

When goal setting you need to think of firstly an overriding definite purpose that makes you get up early and work late to achieve and this should support all the goals you set for all areas of your life – you should try and think in these areas financial, home, family, charity, social and work so you have a rounded life, I understand that sometimes one fuels the other but try and find balance in all you do, it will help your mental and physical well being long into the future.

Let’s take an example – if your big overriding goal is a financial one

You need to decide how much money that you need to earn to have a secure and comfortable life with no worries and you also need to think big as firstly you have to create something that will work for you short term but you also want to have something that will stretch you and help you work toward the future.

When you have decided how much money you need/want to earn you need to work out how many clients or hours in a day this will take.

First if you haven’t thought of it yet, remove the relevant tax level from your yearly figure.

Then divide this by how many clients you currently have per year and this gives you the figure of how much you need to gain using your current client levels if you have a set fee then you may either need to raise this or gain more customers – if you divide the first amount by your set fee you see how many transactions you need to create then divide this by 48 giving you an average of transactions you need to make a week.

Obviously this does not work if you do not have a set fee and only work on a commission, you would therefore have to work out the average commission you earn from the clients.

Take the amount you wish to earn including the tax and divide by 1760 (working hours a year) this gives you a base hourly rate if you could charge per hour 8 hours a day – research shows that nobody ever has 8 hours of productive work a day and some have as little as 12 minutes – we are constantly interrupted by email, telephone, colleagues, employees, family, our own wandering mind and tea making.

I think if you are lucky you have a solid 3 hours of productive time a day so take the hourly figure and multiply this by 3 and it gives you a figure per hour that should focus you to concentrate and avoid as much interruption as possible.

When you have done the finance, hey why not do it all, holidays you want to take, the car you want to buy, the partner you want to attract etc., remember just thinking about these things really starts your subconscious mind on a journey to seek out ways to help you gain these things.

Here’s the Magic!!

Once you have financial, home, family, charity and work goals in place, you need to forget the goal and……………. you need to make a promise to yourself.

Goals are for losers.

Goals are things to aim for to work towards, to aim at and therefore subconsciously are hard to attain or not motivational enough but if you make a promise that is a moral thing and this you will do.

“We are less likely to break a promise than we are to reach a goal”

So once you’ve got your goals written down then rewrite them in a form of a promise.

Write them down, keep them close and review them every day, they will change as you grow. The best thing to do is look at and where possible read them out loud when you wake and just before bed this will allow your subconscious mind to help you achieve your tasks. When you write these down you must be specific and in the present tense so like -

“I promise that today June 29th 2017 I will have a minimum of ￡12000 in a saving account” or “I promise that today March 15th 2017 my personal income is ……” or “I promise that today 4th May 2017 I weigh 13 stone” get the idea?  These exercises clarify your journey and make it easier to achieve anything you want.

So go on forget your goals and make a promise to yourself that the rest of 2017 is going to be your best year yet.

Have an inspiring day and if you want to know how to achieve more on linkedin then download my book at www.linkedtoprofit.co.uk

John Danbury