Setting goals is a waste of time without this….

Got anything you want to achieve this year?

Whenever people set goals, they tend to miss out on one crucial factor.  That factor gets you to where you want to be but is nearly always missed out.

It’s as crucial in setting strategy at work as it is in your personal life.

But no-one tells you about it.

You see, it’s all very well setting goals, but sometimes you need to be different to achieve those goals.  You’re not going to achieve what you want unless you take on certain qualities.

Without them, it’s like mountain climbing in a wheelie bin.

I wanted to change this so, just before the New Year, I completed an exercise that made all the difference to goal setting.

It was quicker and easier doing this with a friend since since talking it through clarified our outcomes.  Two weeks later, I received this text from her:

A couple of weeks later, she sent me this:

I’ve since told others about this exercise and already they’re reporting back positive changes in the way they’re approaching their lives.

David said this had already helped him find and win work and Thea’s managed to negotiate a pay rise: something she’d been avoiding.

The exercise I’m talking about was actually number four, below.  If you need to pin down your direction for the next 12 months, do numbers one to three first.

1. Review the positives from the previous year:

2. Write down at least one factor you’d like to maintain or bring into each of these areas of your life (examples in italics):

• Health and Wellbeing:  maintain current level and tone.  Continue swimming twice a week.
• Finances:  continue paying down my loan and build my nest egg by four times what it is now.
• Relationships:  keep on bringing in people that inspire me and refuse emotional parasites.
• Career:  be more visible at work.  Start a development Whatsapp group to nurture ideas with virtual team.
• Community and philanthropy:  chat to my neighbours more.  Volunteer with the Red Cross once a month.

3. Next, prevent overwhelm:

Now you’ve done that, highlight three of the priority goals

4. Now – and this is the clincher – pinpoint the qualities you need to achieve those goals:

a) Divide your life into 3 periods, write an experience that you were proud of.

b) Then assign to that experience the quality that helped make this happen.  Think of the ones you’ve not used for a while or you’ve not used in these particular areas.  You have so many resources already within you that are possibly not being deployed enough or need to be dug up from the past.

Perhaps it’s more cheek you could call upon: a bit of chutzpah?  Could it be that patience is a practice you’ve forgotten: or is it playfulness that you need?

The first two rows may look like this:

When you look back at this, you’ll see which magical quality you need to bring back to fulfil those aims.

Sometimes, this exercise is easier to do out loud with someone else, so grab a friend OR just close the door and crawl into your thought cave.

If you actually want to achieve your aims, you’ll see results sooner than you think by doing this activity.  It may only take you 10 minutes but the effects could change your life.