If you’ve listened to the top business and personal development coaches, the common theme with all of them is that you must set goals. These goals should be big and scary and you should have many goals to cover different aspects of your business and life.
The theory is simple. Without setting goals, you are not moving towards a target, which in turn is there to stretch and develop you and your business. Goals are targets with definition which lead to a greater target in business, YOUR vision. Have you got one of these?
According to the gurus, goals should be SMART, otherwise they are merely a wish.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
Using this framework, setting a goal of “I want my business to be successful” is not going to work. It’s missing too many key criteria to have any power or credibility. It doesn’t resonate, get you excited and provide any positive feeling towards creating an action plan to achieve it. It falls into the “wish” category.
“I want my business to achieve over £1 million in revenue by 31st December next year” has a much more defined and powerful ring to it. It is specific, measurable and timely. It would also be achievable and realistic if you measured it against current activity.
And yet, whilst the criteria in our example was met, it was still missing vital ingredients. These are passion fuelled by a reason why. If your reason why for your goal doesn’t generate a burning passion inside, then it falls short of the mark. This is a goal that you will work towards but you are not 100% committed to achieving.
But, will goal setting help you generate more success in business as posed by the title of this article?
I believe it will BUT, only if there is a flexible plan behind it. Let me explain…
I use the phrase flexible plan because we know that business life, and life in general, has a tendency to throw us off track when we least expect it. This can be good and bad. It’s a test of our resolve, commitment to ourselves, our business and our customers. It’s also a test to question whether the goal(s) we set was really the most important one(s) or should we have asked for something else?
Whenever we feel as though life is getting better, the universe has a way of placing both opportunities and obstacles along the way. For some, it would seem that there are far more obstacles than opportunities. Is this due to what we attract in life or just plain luck?
The law of attraction suggests that we get what we focus on. If we focus on debt, then for some reason we find more debt around us. If we focus on creating revenue opportunities, then these opportunities will appear. It doesn’t mean they will be obvious opportunities. The universe has a way of sending opportunities in different packages to test whether we are responsive and aware.
By creating problems, the universe is testing our skills. This may be the skill of solving the problem. It may be the skill of seeing a greater opportunity around the edges of the problem rather than zeroing in to solve it. As the saying goes, “in the midst of adversity, there is the seed of an equal or greater opportunity.”
Good business people, see opportunities everywhere, whereas others see problems. It’s a mindset and a very powerful difference which needs to be adopted. This mindset is the greatest opportunity to achieving success. It’s also the greatest gift to have. It provides the platform to evolve yourself and your business. Your problem solving skills will elevate and the law of attraction will provide more of what you focus on.
Whilst you may feel we’ve kinda skipped off topic, I’m here to tell you that all of this is inter-connected. You see goal setting is just one ingredient in a much bigger dish of life. Goal setting doesn’t determine the quality of our relationships, it doesn’t provide the sideshows, opportunities and challenges we all face. Goal setting isn’t a guarantee of success.
What goal setting does is set a number of potential destinations for a specific period in our lives. The journey we take is rarely a straight road, but a long winding into the sunset trip. The goal therefore acts as our compass to get us back on the right track. It also acts behind the scenes when we are making decisions. Does taking this decision bring us closer to our goals or further away? And, if it takes us further away, is it because this goal is no longer important or the wrong goal?
Without goals, we do not have these different compasses to help us stay on the right road. It’s easier to stray off the road and into the wilderness. It’s easier to make the wrong decisions because we don’t know where we are going. It’s also easier to attract the wrong people into your personal and business lives.
Summary
I’ve never met a successful person who didn’t have huge goals and lots of them. They are opportunists. They have the opportunist can-do mindset and use their goals as a barometer. “Does this decision take me closer to my goal now and will it continue to do so, or is it a side show, a little test which actually takes me off track?”
Goal setting contributes significantly to success. Without passion, and a reason why this goal is important to you, it will not have the same power over you. A powerful reason why will chew at your soul and create an unstoppable force in you.
When making goals for 2017, search your feelings for your reason why. Make sure it fires up your passion. If it doesn’t, then you are not creating goals with your highest purpose in mind. At some stage in the year, your innermost passion will lead you down a different path, may be away from this goal. You will be drawn to something else which makes you feel good, a place you desire and enjoy being there. Wherever this place is, this is your inner voice leading you to where you should be. This is why gurus tell you to follow your passion. They know this is where your greatest success will be. This is what they really mean by following your dreams.
In closing this article I hope that you search inside, find your passion and create your goals around this for next year. List your reason(s) why you MUST achieve this goal. Good luck.
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