For me, personally, this is the most important page in the entire site.
Without a why, what’s the point? Why bother getting out of bed?
Zig Ziglar explains it as two different types of people:
Wandering Generalities and Meaningful Specifics.
I think you can figure out which one sets goals.
Why Play?
Let’s say somebody removed the goalposts for a football match.
Sounds crazy right?
Can they play without the goals?
How do they know the score?
How do they compare themselves to the other team?
What’s the point of playing?
They wouldn’t even attempt to play the game without the goalposts.
Why do you play?
How do you keep score?
Are you happy just plodding along, running around aimlessly?
What would make your life better?
What outcome do you want to have?
What makes you happy?
These questions are ok, they make you think, in a nice comfortable, future-positive way. But it’s not really the way to set successful goals.
Try this way of thinking…
What can you not live without?
How much do you need so you don’t lose your house?
Ask yourself this…
If you suddenly lost your job or got hit with a medical emergency that you aren’t covered for, how long is it before you’re living in a box, under a bridge?
Are You Comfortable?
Why do you even want to start this process?
Why NOW?
What’s changed in your life?
These things have been around since people learned to write… and probably even before that. I guess there were some pretty big strategies involved in organizing a bunch of guys with clubs to go out and kill a saber-tooth tiger or a woolly mammoth. Everyone needs to eat right?
What do you need?
Why haven’t you done it yet?
Procrastination
I’ll write this later… Just kidding.
A little while ago I overheard someone complaining. She was moaning about why she always procrastinates, never gets around to it, keeps putting it off, and had the problem all her life.
I wanna be part of the solution, and agreeing with her wouldn’t help anybody. I felt like screaming at her.
What if she was outside in the garden, and her house caught on fire, with her baby in the upstairs bedroom?
Do you think she’d say, “I’ll go get her in a few minutes?”
Obviously, it’s an extreme example… but… No. She wouldn’t care about the heat, the smoke, the danger. It wouldn’t be about HER anymore. She’d break through the door, run up the stairs and jump out of the upstairs window if she needed to.
She just needed a big enough reason to do something. NOW.
What’s YOUR reason?
What’s Your WHY?
Is it Worth the Effort?
Think of something positive you did, that made a big change in your life.
It could have been something like breaking the 3-hour barrier for running a marathon. You couldn’t have done that by accident or luck. You would have needed to create a plan, change your diet, be consistent, train hard, and constantly monitor your progress.
But how did you feel when you crossed the finish line in under 3 hours? What was going through your mind? Was it the pain of your heart beating out of your chest, your shaking legs as you collapsed from exhaustion, no, none of that mattered.
The exhilaration of honestly achieving something as a result of your own blood, sweat, and tears, was far greater than any pain you felt. The key point here is the word Honest. How would you really feel if you won a game by cheating? Would you brag about that to your friends?
Why Doesn’t Everybody Set Goals?
We don’t want to fail. That makes us feel bad. We don’t like to feel bad. If we fail enough times we start to think there’s a pattern. That we are hard-wired to fail, or simply unlucky.
They call this a poor self-image.
You look back on all the time you didn’t do things, and compare yourself to people around you. You feel you no longer deserve the good things, so you stop trying. It leads to depression and sometimes even suicide.
On that cheerful note, there is potentially a way around it.
It must be said, I’m not qualified to give you medical advice over the Internet… so depending on how you’re feeling, go see a professional
You need a purpose in your life. Baby steps.
The whole point of setting goals is to increase your focus on the thing you want to do, get or have. You do things when you have a reason to do them.
When you isolate a specific thing you want to achieve, then put a plan in place to get it, these negative thoughts can be somewhat mitigated at least… as they are replaced with activity.
Get busy.
The by-product is that it forces you to think of solutions to the problem, rather than why you can’t do it. Doing things that improve your life helps you develop those activities into routines, then habits. Good ones.
OK big shot, you told me why I need to set them, but how do I actually do it?
Read on my friend.
Goal Setting Worksheet
Forms coming soon, got the builders in!
As findmycave.com is a website about making money, I guess that’s at least one of the things you’re looking for. As you work through the attached worksheets the reasons for actually doing something will start to appear. This becomes your reason why… then, depending on the scope of your big plans… as we go along we will get into the various ways of finding out HOW we can achieve the things you want.
Together…