Setting & Achieving Goals

Ah...never doubt that God is magnificent in His goodness and stands ready to shower us with blessings if only we would let Him!

I am so overcome with joy for this moment and for the last two weeks of my life. What a wondrous time to be alive. God is good! He loves us! He loves YOU!

When the new year started, I had a house guest, so my intentions for the new year got a little derailed. The day after she left, I had to prepare and serve the food at the funeral of a friend's husband. Finally, on Sunday, January 20, I began something that I had wanted to do on January 1--take a good hard look at my goals.

I decided to take a radically different approach to goal setting this year--different for me, anyway--and not only wrote out what I wanted to do this year, but when I wanted to do them. But that's not all! I followed the advice of Mark Joyner in his Simpleology course--that is, to "backward plan."

Backward planning simply means you look first at the end result and then figure out what would need to be done immediately before that result, then immediately before that, then immediately before that...until you get to today. When you're done you have an action plan that if you just follow it will absolutely bring you to your goal.

Here is how my brainstorming session worked:

1. The goals themselves. First, I brainstormed what I would like to accomplish this year in the following areas:

• Physical


• Relationships


• Personal Development/Learning


• Emotional (what really means something to me)


• Passion (the pursuit of something I am really passionate about--this could be the same as Emotional, but for me they're different: emotion has to do with self-fulfillment, passion has to do with what changes I would like to see in the world)


• Trips


• Business/Money


• Rewards


• And a few other things that I am involved with

Some of these things already had dates associated with them--like the triathlon I am competing in on August 16 and the trips I'll be taking in March (Rome) and July (Hawaii)--so I plugged those in.

2. Monthly milestones. Once I completed the annual list, I looked at which ones I wanted to knock out in the first couple months of the year.

3. Daily action. Since January was nearly over, I mapped out the last remaining days and wrote down specifically what I needed to do each day to accomplish the goals.

4. Evaluation & course correction. I built into my plan that the last day of every month would be "evaluation" day. Everything else that day would be put on hold, and I would focus solely on how I had done the previous month, what I needed to change, and what I would do next month to stay on track.

Once I did these things, I simply set about to do the things on each day's list.

Well, January 31 was my first evaluation day. And it was awesome!

It was so enlightening to look at the past 10 days and see what I had done and what I had not done. What I needed to do or change in order to do better next time. How my behavior affected the reaching or not reaching of my goals.

I discovered that there were certain things (like my triathlon training) that I accomplished 100%--no matter what. And there were other things (like doing my Beyond Freedom every day) that were hit and miss. I also noticed that there were things I did 100% that were time wasters--not related to my goals in the least (like checking email). "What do these numbers mean?" I asked myself.

I got out a piece of paper and just started writing--journalling a conversation with my subconscious about why certain things seemed to be important, and other things (as shown by my actions) did not. The answer came clearly and strongly: I need to put the same amount of focus and effort into my other goals as I do in the triathlon.

In fact, the answer was so glaringly obvious that I wondered how I could have missed it--why on earth did it take so much time to be able to see it? I was so grateful that I had done this evaluation process--grateful that I had the opportunity to nip these bad habits--after only 10 days.

I began at once to map out the month of February--including as I did weekly goals in addition to the monthly one, and a "mini" evaluation day on Sunday in addition to the major one on the 29th (don't forget it's a leap year!).

And I am here to tell you that miracles have occurred since I have done this! Things have come to pass that I never could have predicted or imagined. It really is true that "the Universe will correspond to the nature of your song" (Michael Beckwith, The Secret).

I am so excited see what I will create tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...!