The purpose of your life is not to let the circumstances of life push and pull you all over the place. It is for you to decide what you want your life to be and to take control of your direction.
Clear, concise goals provide direction and purpose. Your journey to success is steered on the road by the goals that you set for yourself, and provide the fuel that will power you towards your dreams.
Do you know where you are going with your life?
Perhaps that is why you’re here, researching goals, wanting to find out how to turn your life around by powering up everything you do by working towards bringing a compelling vision that you hold on to in your mind.
Goal setting is an essential skill that everyone needs to have. Very few people however take the time to think about their goals for the future. Those that live their life by design experience greater success, fulfilment, happiness and joy. There is a magic in goal setting that is unleashed when you start to live your life with a sense of purpose guided by a well-planned future.
More often than not people are absorbed by dealing with day to day problems, working their butts off to survive. Their minds are just filled with negativity and fear of what the future holds. Everyone must have an aim, a destination that one is trying to arrive at.
Everybody has some sort of goal, alas for many their goal is just to get through the day a goal of survival. It is time for you to design your future, and see clearly how you want your life to look in 5 years’ time. With goals we create the future in advance and the power of goals is the one thing that all successful people apply to their lives daily.
We spend too much time in the here and now, and not enough time working on what will give our lives meaning, our vision of ourselves, our values, our mission, and our contribution. If you want to change your life and achieve all your goals, you have to spend time in the future visualising life as it will be when perfect. This will give you a compelling vision for the future.
Setting your life goals is one of the most life-changing thing you can do. During the process of goal setting you have to come clear to answer one of the most profound question:
What do I want from my life?
A goal is a future achievement with a timely deadline you can work towards to. A compelling goal is something that has a deeper meaning to you. It excites you, lets you grow and it’s achievement will be fulfilling and rewarding. You just have to determine the one that clearly shows what you want from your life.
To me the most important things you have to decide are:
- The work you want to do
- The people you want to be with
- The legacy you want to leave
- The kind of person you want to become
- The things you want to do
- Those things you want to have
If this article is going to have any impact on your life, not just taking 5 minutes to have read it, then don’t read on till you’ve thought through each of these questions.
Once you have answered these questions a vision should now be forming in your mind showing you the picture of what you want from your life. All you then have to do is to set a goal, make a plan, and then work the plan until you succeed . You’ve probably read about the Harvard study on goals, but it is worth reminding you.
Mark McCormick in his book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School tells of a Harvard study conducted between 1979 and 1989.
In 1979, graduates at Harvard were asked whether they had set clear written goals for their future and their plans to accomplish them. It turned out only 3 percent of the graduates had written goals, 13 percent had goals but they were not in writing and 84 percent had no specific goals at all.
Ten years later, in 1989, the researchers again interviewed the members of that same graduating class. They found that the 13 percent who had goals that were not in writing were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent of students who had no goals at all. The 3 percent of graduates who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, 10 times more than 97 percent of their graduating class.
Could there be any more proof needed to demonstrate the importance of setting goals?
So create your compelling vision, then leave nothing to chance, get busy planning what you need to do to bring it about. Go on to live a life driven by a compelling vision for your future and one day be living that vision.
