LIFE GOALS — MAKING A LIST

Overcoming Obstacles to Success

In previous posts I have talked a lot about dream building.  Why?  Because the inability to dream, the inability to really imagine oneself in a very different circumstance, is one of the biggest obstacles most people have in trying to be successful. They not only can’t achieve their life goals.  They probably don’t really have any that are very clear.   I am going to talk about dream building again in this post before we begin to merge dreams and goals.  You are even going to make a dream list to test your skill at dreaming.  It can be fun to dream.  If you haven’t tried it lately, you are in for a treat.

You may be asking yourself why all this is important when all you want to do is start a business and get rich — or at least pay the bills.  The honest brutal truth is that although the rewards that can come from business ownership could be huge, it will not be easy.  There will be obstacles galore and days that your biggest goal will be to give up.  You will want to quit.  The only burning desire you will have will be to get as far away from the business as possible.  If you are not clear on where you want to go and why, you may actually give up on the best decision you ever made and success and any life goals you have will elude you once again.  When you cut down a tree, you will find it very difficult to do so if you don’t first sharpen the ax.  This is ax sharpening time.

This would be a good time to suggest that getting your spouse or partner involved with these exercises can be a good idea.  Your joint futures are probably tied closely  together.  It will make things easier if you are on the same page.  Ask your spouse to read the previous posts and both of you will work separately and then together on the lists that I am going to ask you to do.  It may be an amazing  journey of discovery for both of you when you share your lists.

So you have learned, if you didn’t know, that most of us have been conditioned to believe that we cannot reach our dreams.  We have been conditioned to believe we have limitations. So we either never reach our life goals or we  set them too low.  If we see a television ad enough times, we become conditioned not only to buy the product, but to use phrases or words from the ad in our daily conversation and to think in terms of the message the ad is conveying.  As a society so many people can be influenced this way that our language and our culture are sometimes changed by television advertising.

The result of negative conditioning is negative attitudes so deeply ingrained that we often do not even realize that they are there.  However, when we talk about getting rich or any other really big dreams – and although not all dreams require money, most do – when we talk about our biggest dreams, we giggle nervously and have trouble sharing the  really big dreams with even close friends and family members.  We are not sure we ourselves believe that they are practical goals that can really be reached and we are sure that other people will view our ideas as  far-fetched pipe dreams, unlikely to come to any good.  In some cases we are afraid if we are too honest about our dreams, some of our relatives might try to have us committed.

The good news is that we can overcome our conditioning and develop new attitudes, habits, and behavior that can lead to different results.

The first step, of course, is that we ourselves must overcome that part of our conditioning that keeps us from believing we can achieve what we set out to do.  We can start to do that simply by doing, by moving toward success, regardless of our doubts.  We can also change our input.

Then we must set clear, exciting life goals.  Let me repeat that.  We must set CLEAR…AND…EXCITING life goals.  Clear so that we can really understand where we want to go and exciting so that we will have a burning desire to get there.  We will talk about both of these elements later. After setting clear and exciting goals, we must lay out practical action steps to achieve those goals.

Although it is not easy to overcome a lifetime of conditioning, it can be done.  The damage that was done…and sometimes is still being done…by negative input can be undone by positive input.  If we set a goal to change an attitude and find a way to give ourselves repeated positive input over time, our thinking will gradually begin to change.

You can achieve just about anything you want in life, but nothing is free.  A commitment will be required on your part, a commitment to be the best that you can be.

Dream Skills and Doing That List

It is time to look at the shape your dream skills are in.  Maybe you have no real dreams, except to retire and to live a simple life.  That’s fine.  That is really a dream, too.  Just make sure that you are not working to fulfill someone else’s dream for you and not your own.  Maybe you have lost the ability to dream bigger dreams because of a lifetime of conditioning that has caused you to think that your dreams are unreachable and that you should concentrate on more practical things.  Maybe a spouse or other loved one has convinced you to give up your dream because he or she has been conditioned to think dreams like yours are unreachable.  Or maybe you have always had modest dreams.  Whichever scenario is true, it’s all right.  I just want you to be open minded and to examine honestly what you really want from life and to make sure you are not just settling for less because you think it is all you can get.

I am going to lay out a system for you that will allow you to focus all your efforts every day toward achieving your dreams.  You will have the tools to be able to decide what is really important to you, to set long-term life  goals that will reflect your personal priorities,  and to plan your activities every day to achieve progress toward those goals.  I am sure that you have other priorities in life and that some of you may be questioning whether expending time and effort on this undertaking is worthwhile.  Maybe it isn’t.

But let me ask you a question.  How many of you…when you are really honest…feel that you are not getting much closer to your dreams through your current daily activities…that you are sort of spinning your wheels when it comes to your dreams? And if you are not succeeding following your current path, do you want to do better.  Good.

Remember, it is your future and you are responsible for it.

Which way to your future?

There is a possibility that you have never before had access to the tools and concepts that I am going to give you.  I speak from personal experience when I talk about how valuable these tools are. The first time I was taught this concept, my immediate  thought was that  it was way too time consuming and my busy world didn’t have room for it.  But when I actually set long-term goals and then learned to  translate them into daily activities that would get me to those goals,  I thought I had discovered some sort of an epiphany.  It revolutionized my sense of purpose and I have watched so many other people have the same feeling that I am convinced that you will have a sense of purpose you have never had before if you will learn and use these methods.

To begin, let’s see where you are now.

Take a piece of paper and write down your biggest goal right now.  Take five minutes to do that before you  read anymore.

All right.  Now put that sheet to one side.  On another sheet write down the biggest dream you have ever had.  Take five minutes to do that.

Are there any differences?  What does this exercise tell you about what you have lost?  What does this exercise tell you about what your world looks like today and how many “what if”s” there may be in your life because your life doesn’t look like you want it to look?

Dreams change.  There may be some dreams that you had as a child that you don’t even want today. That is natural.   However, there may also be those child-like dreams that you are afraid  to admit that you still want.  Those may be part of the “what ifs”.

List your dreams . From your dreams will come your life goals.

The best place to start long-term goal setting, also called “effective dreaming”,  is with a dream list.  Just write down every dream you have ever had, up to a hundred if possible.  Include things you’ve wanted to be, things you’ve wanted to do, things you’ve wanted to own, places you’ve wanted to visit, etc.  Sort of like a bucket list.   Remember the child you were — the one who thought anything was possible.  Have fun with the list.  It will be very useful later. That list may lead to life goals you never thought of before.   And the added benefit is that you are starting to dream again.

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Let me know about your success or lack of it in the past and what you have gotten from this blog so far to set you on a new path.  Please  leave a comment.  I would like to hear from you.  And if you leave your contact information at the top right corner of this page, I will also send you notification anytime I update the blog.