Terry Xiao Blog
Finance and Business
Goal Setting Step By Step
There are three different levels at work when it comes to your long term ambitions. You’ve got plans, goals and dreams. Plans are boring things comprised only of practical steps, like “Pay the bills on time”, “Check the oil”, or a grocery list. A dream is something that’s more broad, abstract and ambiguous in nature. A dream is something like “Direct a low budget feature film” or “Get rich”. It’s something that’s really just a long shot hope. Goal setting, on the other hand, revolves around the idea of taking a dream, and combining it with a plan…
If you’re getting sick of just wishing in one hand and… Well, you know… If you want to actually reach your potential in life, there are four steps you can take to getting where you want to be…
Write Your Dreams Down
Write down all your dreams so that you have a sheet of paper to work on. Write all of them down, even the ones that seem kind of silly, and then think of how to make those ones maybe a little more realistic. For example, if you don’t even run track in the first place, you can forget breaking the world record for time on running the mile. But you can probably at least get to a point where you can run a very fast mile, so be realistic so you won’t be discouraged.
Turn Dreams Into Goals
Take your dream and break it down into goals. So say you want to be rich. Your DREAM is to be rich. Your long term GOAL is to attain X amount of money. A dream is, in the end, sort of a wishy washy, ambiguous, unattainable thing. To dream is easy. To turn it into a goal, you have to come face to face with the work that entails. The dreamers, wishers and hopers get scared off at the prospect of work. YOU, on the other hand, should welcome the challenge.
Break it Down
So… If you want to get X amount of money before you’re X years old, this means that your short term goal is to start a small business and start saving. Break each long term goal down into a list of shorter term goals. So if you want to write the Great American Novel, you start by getting a few short stories published while working on the first draft, so you can get some feedback to refine your masterpiece. Break it down into one-year chunks, and cross each short-term goal off the list as you reach it.
Put in the Work!
Just do it! Stop wishing and dreaming and hoping, and embrace the challenge. Whatever your goals, there’s something you can do RIGHT NOW to put in work towards them, so stop wasting time and start putting the work in. If you want to write a novel, you can write the first page right now. If you want to start a business, you can make your start-up money with a smaller business by selling something on an auction site right this instant. Get started, and stop wasting your own time.
And to learn how to set and hit your goals in an easy step by step manner get my free report on at From Anthony D. Carter – a leading expert on goal setting.
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