« What’s Your Focus - Long Or Short-Term Goals? Part 1 | Home | Would You Eat In A Soup/ Soul Kitchen? »

What’s Your Focus - Long Or Short-Term Goals? Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, I dicussed the importance of clarifying to yourself the difference between short- and long-term goals. Now I’ll provide a concrete example, after discussing some of the elements required to successfully set and achieve a goal.

There a few crucial elements required to set and reach any goal. Some people know them innately, others need to think about them at length. My own experience is that once you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals regularly, you will not have to think about each step overly. Until then, here they are. Reviewing them doesn’t hurt, if you already know them.

1. Knowing specifically what your goal is.
2. Knowing why you want it.
3. Knowing in a general way how you will achieve it.
4. Doing your part to learn what skills you need to actually achieve your goals.
5. Focusing on manifesting intent.
6. Reviewing your progress.

Let’s discuss these elements. They are not necessarily the only ones, but I feel that they are the key elements in goal-achievement, based on what I’ve experienced, and the feedback I’ve received from teaching other peope.

What Is Your Goal?

If you don’t know where you are headed, you’ll never get there. People who do not have a concrete goal rarely achieve anything. I know this from 25 years of setting goals for myself and coaching others. It doesn’t mean you will not stray; in fact, you probably will. But knowing what it is - and having it “visible” to yourself daily, as I mentioned in Part 1 - allows you to get back on track when you do stray. Be concrete.

Why Do You Want It?

What do you really want? Is it really the goal that you’ve stated above? Or something related, that you have not been able to state concretely? If you work towards a goal that you don’t really want (or even believe you can have), you’re likely to find that things go wrong an awful lot. Either that or you’ll give up. You really have to want this goal. It doesn’t matter to anyone but yourself why, but you have to know that for yourself. Furthermore, you have to really want this goal. As Steve Pavlina says, your intentions have to create strong positive emotions in you else they are not worth doing.

How Will You Achieve It?

Does your goal require you to learn a new skill or get better at something you already know? Is either task within your reach at present? If not, do you know how you they might be? It’s easy, for example, to say that you want to be a millionaire. But if you don’t whether you want to achieve it through real estate, stock market, writing, sports, or even inheritance, it’s unlikely to happen. This is true for any goal, large or small, whether or not it has to do with money.

What Will You Do For It?

Now that you know in a general way how you would like to achieve your goal, what are you planning to actually do to get there? For example, if you want to become a millionaire as a stock market mogul, what specifically, will you do to move towards that goal? Take courses in investing? Get a degree in business? Borrow money and start buying stocks? Read prospectuses? You get the idea.

This is another area where you need to be concrete. If you haven’t a clue what to do to move towards your goal, then it’s very likely that you want to achieve the goal due to external influences: your parents want you to be a doctor, your girlfriend/ boyfriend has expensive tastes, your friends think it’s cool. If that’s the case, then you need to ask yourself whether this is what you really want. Because if it isn’t, you’re unlikely to achieve your goal.

Are You Focused?

Steve Pavlina has written a great article about how intentions manifest. This is a must-read article. He discusses how he sets about visualizing his intentions and some of the side-effects that might occur if you are not truly focused on your goal. This includes what he calls “alpha” and “beta” reflections. The alpha reflection is a positive result that manifests soon after visualizing your intent. The beta reflection takes longer to occur, and provides concrete evidence that you are on your way to achieving your goal. It’s the period inbetween, which he calls the “calm before the storm” (and old saying that applies to many things) that you have to watch out for. Most people quit, he says, during the calm. If you’re focused on what you want, the beta reflection will come. If not, then move on to another goal.

Where Are You So Far?

If your goal is long-term, it’s worthwhile reviewing your progress - but only if you feel it’s not going to make you question whether you’ll ever reach it. Doing that simply puts you into a frame of mind that says that your goal is impossible. A review of your progress for long-term goals should be primarily to make sure that you are following your own tasklist for reaching your goal.

For example, assume that you have split up a long-term goal into a several short-term goals and a list of exercises you need to conduct at each stage. Have you reached your first short-term goal? If not, can you still continue on to your next short-term goal? Have you reached a bottleneck? What can you do to solve it? Do you still feel as excited about the long-term goal as you did when you started your visualization exercise?

I promised a concrete example, so I’ll give you one of my own goals. I’m laying down (some of) my cards on the table - details I’ve alluded to in past posts - and revealing some pretty personal information. Which should explain why I want to achieve my goal. I believe a concrete example has to be a real example. Firstly, I’ll repeat the old saying: be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. That happened to me.

Back in 2001, during my last contract, I went around telling those who asked my plans that I was hoping it was my last contract, and that I wanted to try once again to become a professional writer as well as a composer for film and TV. Long story short, it did become my last contract. You manifest what you focus on, rightly or wrongly. And if you’re unprepared, the universe will sweep you up like flotsam and jetsam.

I’ve struggled through the last four years in odd jobs to pay the bills, doing my writing as I’m able to. I’m living the classic “struggling writer” life, but I had to live it to truly realize that romantic notion of it was simply that. It’s definitely no picnic.

Writing and managing my weblogs has given me motivation to keep up my writing. But I realized that I had no concrete idea of what I wanted out of my online writing. It wasn’t until I started reading Steve Pavlina’s weblog early this year that I finally remembered all of my own goal-achieving experience, long since forgotten, that I re-learned to focus on my goals, and to work on manifesting my intent.

My motivation is to once again have a career. I’m just not one of those people that can be happy doing nothing. (Although that doesn’t mean that my definition of doing something isn’t someone else’s definition of doing nothing.) I’ve worked physically-intense jobs (mostly cooking in restaurants) for the past four years while trying to focus on my goal of making a new career from at least my writing, if not composing. I realize that I’m a thinker, a cerebral person, and while I can do what’s necessary to pay the bills, I just cannot be fulfilled in a “physical” job. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not for me.

So I know why I want my goal, and I have positive emotions towards reaching it. Or do I? The long-term goal that I stated to myself, not too long ago, is to earn $10,000/m from all my online activities: writing for others, writing for myself, affiliate sales, writing + selling e-books, savings and investments, and maybe even the odd round of online poker and backgammon. (I’m leaving composing out of the picture for now.)

While during the “alpha” reflection I manifested a number of writing gigs, the calm period has produced a situation that I may not get these gigs, for various reasons. I’ll find out soon for sure. But I realize now that despite the fact that I once earned nearly $16,000/m in a contract in Atlanta not so many years ago, I’d barely been making $10,000/yr for the past few years, and my subconscious just had a hard time believing I could make that amount in a month, even a few years from now. While some bloggers and webmasters are making $30,000+/m (one is making $10,000/d, he claims), I just cannot wrap my head around the idea that I can do that. At least not yet.

Enter the short-term goal. I’ve now divided up my long-term goal into a number of short-term milestone goals. I’m only focusing on the first short-term goal, which at present is to make $2,000/m from writing for others and from my advertising on my own websites. This is in fact a reasonable amount, and since it’s more than I’ve been making for a while, will allow me to save, pay down debts, maybe move back to Toronto or even Montreal, or finally take that walk around the world I’ve been thinking of for over a decade. (Atlanta is another destination, but it’s out of the picture for now)

My current manifestations are already slightly more than half this amount, or will be once the details are finalized. This positive feedback gives my subconscious validation that my short-term goal can be achieved. And once that happens, I can focus on the next short-term goal, which might be to make another $1000/m, followed by a goal to earn a certain amount with some investments, etc.

By setting more achievable milestone goals, it’s far easier to believe that you can make it to your long-term goal. That’s especially important if you have been experiencing a dry spell in your life, which makes it hard to believe that abundance can be yours (again).

Tags: richmanpoorman, rich man poor man, goal-setting, self-improvement