Clarity on your goals

If you’ve been to one of my talks, or listened to a webinar I’ve done, then you’ve probably heard about my 5 Keys to Making Your Goals a Reality.  These keys are concepts that I have put into practice in my own life and they have helped me achieve goals that I had only talked about doing for years. Since we’re now in the last month of the year, I thought I would do a series of blogs for the next few weeks on the 5 Keys. Here is the first in the series, you must be clear on where you want to go or you’ll never know if you’re getting closer to or further from your destination.

Clarity on your vision is the first step to making your goals a reality. I like using the GPS analogy when discussing goal achievement. You can have the most sophisticated GPS system, but if you don’t enter a destination, it won’t be of much use to you! What is it that you want to achieve in 2015? If you’re answer to this is “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” consider what you want your life to look like a year from now. What would you need to achieve to feel that 2015 was a successful year?

There are exercises and tools out there that will help you gain clarity on what you want to accomplish if you’re not sure. Here are my top three:

1. Write your obituary – how do you want to be remembered? It may seem like a morbid exercise, but it is a worthwhile one. If you’ve read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People then you know that Stephen Covey is all about starting with the end in mind. If you’re not living your life in a way that is aligned with the legacy you want to leave behind, what are you waiting for? I know we don’t like to think about our own mortality, but the reality is none of us knows when our time here on earth will come to an end. You might as well make every moment count!

2. Create you bucket list – when I first worked with a life coach, one of the early assignments I was given to do is 101 things I wanted to do before I died. I started the exercise doubtful that I would be able to come up with that many things I wanted to do, but I surprised myself! Once I got into it, I started writing all the places in the world I wanted to visit, skills I wanted to learn and even musical acts I wanted to see perform live. Don’t let the number overwhelm you, just start writing and see what happens.

3. Vision boards – this is one of my favourite exercises to do because it’s so much fun! Think of a vision board as a visual culmination of the other two exercises I mentioned. You can put pictures of places you want to visit, quotes that inspire you, words that describe the kind of life you want to live and even pictures of how achieving these goals is going to impact those close to you. This is a great exercise to do with a friend – I like to think of it as a cut and paste party! Once you’re done with your vision board, display it somewhere you’ll see it on a regular basis. You’re board should inspire you to stay focused and motivated to make those goals manifest, even when it seems impossible!

The next post will talk about one of my favourite topics: Silencing the Peanut Gallery! Something we all need to do if we hope to make our dreams come true! ♥