Happy New Year. The time of year when we often reflect upon the previous year and take inventory of what we have accomplished and where we fell short. Many people (myself included) take the time to set goals for the upcoming year, but just saying what we want to happen isn’t enough.
If you want to have some positive changes in 2018 if you have hopes and dreams of what you would like to happen in 2018, or if you’re going to make a positive impact on someone’s life, then you must do more than just dream and hope – you have to have a plan.
Sadly, it is too often that I see clients in my office, who have a hope and dream for retirement, helping out with college funding, or leaving a legacy, but they don’t have a solid plan. This is where goal setting and planning come into play.
Goal setting/planning is so important because it helps you map out what is essential, what the priorities are, and how you’re going to get there.
When I meet with my clients who are asking for my help with setting up goals and getting a plan together to reach them, I am ecstatic, because I know that having written targets, that have been mapped out carefully, you have an 80% higher chance of achieving your dream.
Now there are many, many goal-setting articles out there, and you can google planning books and get page after page of options. But here is how I work with my clients (and how I do my goal planning); I tell my clients to take 15 – 20 minutes and write out 30 things they would like to do, have, and achieve in their life. The reason for the short time frame is it forces the real priorities to be on the top.
If I am working with a couple, I ask them to do this separately and then compare and come up with the top 5 that agree with both of them. With this top 5, I can take them through the steps of making the goals specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Then we start working on one goal at a time; the “push goal” that will help them get to the rest of the goals and breaking down that push goal on what needs to be done, how it will get done, and when it needs to be completed.
When my clients have written goals, and have a written plan on how they are going to achieve those goals, I have clients who have a higher chance of achieving those dreams, and that is really what my job is all about – making dreams happen.
