Use Goals and Planning to Maximise Life.

How you respond to challenges and opportunities in life is a choice.

You can choose to squeeze life and create the future you want, or you can allow life to squeeze you and be governed by your past or other people’s ways of thinking.

In his book 'Outwitting the Devil', Napoleon Hill discusses the 'definiteness of purpose'. Tony Robbins also talks about having clarity on what you are passionate about, your purpose, and what you want to achieve in life.

To go after what you want requires action. Nothing can happen without it. You can have the best idea, the biggest goal, and the greatest intent and achieve nothing. Alternatively, you can have all of that, and with a great plan combined with consistently acting on the idea, you can achieve your dreams, create impact, and inspire possibilities for yourself. It all comes down to how committed you are. Ask yourself, are you interested or committed? This is an interesting question to ponder, so you may want to take some time to do just that! This is important because when you are interested, you most likely do what is comfortable and easy; however, when you are committed and genuinely committed, you will do whatever it takes.

This is how it is with planning. A plan is powerful when you are committed to developing it, using a framework that gives you the best outcome and then a structure that will bring it to life. All that is required is the discipline to show up daily and act, even when mistakes or perceived failures occur. This is another crucial aspect to consider because there is no such thing as failure; there are only results. Everything you do will give you a result. It may not be the desired result; however, it is an outcome of some kind. Change your thinking, change your results. When you get a result that is not what you want, change your thinking to change the strategies and actions you are taking as part of your plan to try something different to get a different result. It is that easy…test and measure.

Back to planning. How often have you thought about an idea or something you wanted to achieve and not taken action to bring it to life and then experienced that someone else has done or created what you had the idea for? They were not smarter or more intelligent; their actions would be different. They were disciplined to focus on what they wanted most and not allow the short-term gratification of the now moment to get in their way.  When it comes to planning, the quote that Abraham Lincoln was famous for saying is a great one to keep in mind, “discipline is simply choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”

This is the power of planning, and here are three steps to follow to get started:

Step 1

Identify your big goal. Think big, go big. The bigger the goal, the more action you will take to achieve it. The smaller the goals, the fewer actions you need to take. I am not talking about big in global terms; I am talking about big in your terms; what is big for you?

Step 2

Decide what you need to act on to achieve your goal. What areas of business or life require specific actions to bring your goal to reality? This is where you challenge yourself on whether you are interested or committed. What are you willing to do to make this goal a reality?

Step 3

Create a documented plan that uses the SMART principles and captures what you need to do. This is where discipline is essential. The discipline to spend the time to document and get clarity to bring your goal to life by prioritising what needs to be done.

Follow these three steps and experience the real power of planning. Planning helps you live with integrity in your values and your beliefs. You can create the life you want by showing up consistently, with discipline and commitment. Without setting goals and planning activities to bring them to life, you may be allowing life to squeeze you.

If you want support to set goals and create a great plan, click here to book a complimentary strategy session with a coach at Leaders Network.