After you’ve read this post, you’ll know that setting goals is really, really important.
Goals are so essential to your success in anything you do that they should be considered the number one factor determining whether or not you’ll achieve something. If you want to know whether you’ll achieve the things you want to in your life in 5 years time, all you need to do is ask yourself whether you’ve made proper goals.
When I say ‘goals’ I don’t just mean a bucketlist, or little lists including things such as –
- Get rich
- Start a company
- Travel the world
These aren’t goals. At least not in my opinion. They’re wishes.. Dreams.. And they won’t help you because firstly, they’re not specific. A goal must be specific as well as realistic. Let’s say you want to travel the world. What does that even mean? More importantly, how will you know if you’ve done it or not?
When you’ve seen 5 countries? One from each continent? Your favorite ones?
It’s not specific enough, and therefore you’ll never know when you’ve ACTUALLY done it. For this reason, you’ll never be motivated enough to complete it, and when it gets tough you’ll justify it by telling yourself that you’ve already completed it.
For example, let’s say you set your goal to get rich. How rich? What happens when it gets really tough, you’ve got bills to pay, unexpected medical expenses etc, what then? Let’s say you have a respectable 5 figures in the bank. Is that enough? Are you rich?
What about when you have a 6 figure sum in your account. Have you completed your goal then?
Maybe you take a beating from life (Which we all do at some point) and wind up house-bound for a year or so after a car crash. You won’t be able to go out and work, so how will you survive financially? Will you just tell yourself ‘I’ve completed my goal because I’m rich in the sense I have a loving family around me’.
Maybe that’s true. People can be rich but have no money, it depends what you consider to be ‘rich’. If you set a CLEAR goal, it would look something like this –
‘I want to have a passive income of AT LEAST £2000 EVERY month, and a net asset value of at least £1,000,000′.
Now at any time, night or day you can know FOR SURE whether you’ve completed your goal. It’s not vague, because it’s descriptive and defines exactly what the goal is. You’ll know whether or not you’re earning £2k a month passively.
You either HAVE achieved this goal, or you HAVEN’T. There are no doubts here.
I am going somewhere with this, don’t worry. So I’ve explained that the goals you set must be clear and well defined, but why are goals so important?
Why setting goals is so important
Well, there are a number of reasons, but the main one is that by focusing on something, we attract the things in our life that need to be there to help us achieve it.
It’s like a giant magnet, only it works in much more complicated ways.
This is not even a reference to the law of attraction, although the principle works much the same. It’s just the way the world works. If you have a clear goal in your head, your mind is going to act differently and therefore your behavior will change.
When you change the way you think and act in relation to your goal, the world responds by presenting opportunities that you wouldn’t have noticed before.
You ever noticed when you buy a new car, you instantly start to notice LOADS of the same type of car, all around you?
Well, they haven’t magically appeared, it’s just because you’ve recently bought that car, your mind unconsciously focuses on that type of car.
They were all around you the whole time, but you NOTICE them because it’s on your mind.
It works much the same way with setting goals.
If you have a goal of getting rich, for example, you’ll NOTICE things around you that others wouldn’t. You’ll notice things that YOU wouldn’t have noticed before you set your goal of getting rich.
Things like –
– Friendships with people likely to succeed
– Opportunities for new business and investments
– Product ideas
– Ways to reduce your spending
And so on. These things were always all around you but if you don’t set the goal, you won’t notice them. Your mind can only focus on so much at a time. It sort of ‘tunes out’ everything it thinks you don’t need. This is why it’s so important to set a goal, because without them, your mind will never see the opportunities that will get you there.
Setting VAGUE goals is better than NO goal, but it’s still not ideal. When you set vague goals, your mind just wanders too much and you always think of it more as a sort of distant dream. Making it REAL and measurable brings more than just your wishful thinking into play.
It makes you think real solutions up for how to get there. How to get results.
If your goal is to earn £2k a month passive income, your mind knows that it’s a specific goal, so it’s not just a vague question of ‘how do I get rich’, it’s more like ‘I’m currently earning £100 a month passive income, what can I do to get to £200, and then up to £1k?’
You look for specific actionable solutions instead of daydreaming.
You look for the bottlenecks in your business and places where you might be leaving money on the table. So, measurable goals are important, but what next? How do you achieve the goal itself?
Don’t worry about HOW you achieve your goal
The actual gritty details of HOW you achieve your goal are almost irrelevant.
Think of it like this –
When you’ve set your goal, and it’s definitely something you want and want to work for, your mind and the universe will do the rest. I don’t mean that in a ‘new agey’ kind of ‘let the universe give you what you want’ sort of way, I mean that by adopting the right attitude and mindset, you’ll figure it out.
You’ll look for new solutions to old problems, and you’ll provide solutions to new problems as well. In fact, it’s GOOD to run into problems, because it shows you’re moving forward.
But seriously, keep focused on your goal, and you WILL think up solutions to the problems. Take it one step at a time. I hope this doesn’t come across as too cliche and ‘easier said than done’.
Here’s what I mean in a real life example. Let’s pretend that you want to create a website with which you want to earn passive income. Even if you know NOTHING about building a site, just start with step 1…
What do you want the site to be about? If you don’t know, research and get some ideas. After reading a few blogs and books you’ll be better than most at copywriting, and even if you’re not, do something every day for a year and you WILL be better than when you started.
Wherever you run into a problem, simply use the amazing FREE tool we have in this day and age – Google.
I’ve self taught myself everything I know now about Marketing, Copywriting, Email Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Web design, and All of that stuff. Self taught, using Google. The most important thing I learned is this –
It’s not about taking perfect steps, it’s about taking one step after another. Go from each mistake to the next until you make it work. You’re going to make mistakes no matter what, so make them faster! Don’t delay anything you can do today!
If you don’t know how to set up a website, google it, learn it quickly and do it. You don’t need to know everything about a topic to be good at it. I don’t know how to code, but I’ve still managed to get several websites up and running in the last year.
There are always ways round problems. The GOAL is the most important thing though, make sure to keep that at the front of your mind.
Good luck!
Hopefully you now realise the importance of setting goals in business and in life. Whatever your goal is, I wish you the best of luck with it! Please feel free to continue the discussion on Facebook and tell me what you think!