Key Life Area: Personal

Jun 22

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Have you had difficulty with keeping your New Year’s resolutions, every year?

Have you been unable to lose weight for the summer?

Do you wish you had more purpose to your everyday activities?

Well, here’s the secret to how successful people approach their personal life, and you can, too!

The personal part of your life is a key aspect to improving your overall lifestyle. Enriching your personal life can allow you to achieve what you want, and to handle difficulties much more effectively.

Hopefully, this section will help you through these processes, and begin preparing you for a better way of life. Let’s get started . . .

3 Basic Steps You Need to Reach Your Dreams:

1. Mission Statement

2. Goals

3. Action Steps

Don’t be intimidated, these are simple to write and do, and are worth the time and effort.

If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. – Yogi Berra

Mission Statement: Begin with What’s Important to You

Before you decide what type of job you want, budget to create, or fitness regimen to follow, you may benefit from writing your mission statement.

Your mission statement is a simple explanation of your purpose in your life. It’s the basic foundation on which everything you do is based.

Because of this, it needs to be

· Short and simple,

· An expression of who you are, and

· What you would like to do with your life.

Remember, though, you define your mission statement, your mission statement doesn’t define you.

Here are some examples of mission statements from successful people:

"To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be." — Oprah Winfrey

"To have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes." — Sir Richard Branson

Notice how the statements are short and sweet. Your mission statement needs to be basic, so that it can include a broad range of activities to include in it.

It also makes it easy to tell if something you are considering doing does not fit with your purpose.

It’s kind of like the U.S. Constitution, which was written to be short and flexible, with the long-term future in mind, so that there would not be a need for tons of amendments to fix it if it was too detailed and specific.

For more information on the importance of creating mission statements and examples, which can also be used for companies, go to https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/mission-statement-101.

For basic steps, and a template, you may also go to https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/personal-mission-statement.

Once you have your mission statement clarified, you are ready to go to the next step for improving your personal life: Goals!

Read on . . .

Setting Reachable Goals

Now that you have defined your life’s purpose with your mission statement, you need to determine what you want to accomplish with it – that’s where goals come in.

Whenever you come across a serious self-improvement book, it invariably stresses goal-setting as a cornerstone to achieving success in your life.

I generally used to look past any such section to get to the “good stuff,” and procrastinated in approaching such a personal activity.

Goal-setting, however, does not need to be intimidating or overly stressful. You can simply look at it as a way to keep your priorities in line when you come across distractions or difficulties.

I think the best way to set a goal is to think of something you’d like to accomplish that is definitely achievable, check the ability to say to yourself, “I can do that!”, and then write it down on paper.

If it looks too easy or hard after you’ve written it down, you can adjust it to what seems good to you. Remember: it’s your goal - make it workable and attainable for you. And, like they say, it’s about progress, not perfection.

Criteria for Goals

To get the results you are aiming for, your goals need to be “SMART” and meet certain criteria:

• Goals should be Specific

• Goals should have Measurable results

• Goals should be Attainable based on the knowledge that you have the ability to complete the necessary actions to reach your desired results

• Goals should be Realistic, and within your control

• Goals should have definite Timelines

Making goals attainable and realistic is especially important, as doing so will help you to keep from feeling too much pressure and disappointment from setting your goals too high.

In other words, you should be able to expect ahead of time that you can realistically reach your goals if you do the actions you have planned.

You may need to work the numbers and figure out whether performing x number of actions or tasks will eventually take you to y results at such-and-such dates. Goals should also be written from a positive standpoint, with optimistic expectations.

For more information about setting “SMART”goals, go to:

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm

Here are some examples of ineffective vs. effective goals:

Goal Examples

Ineffective goal:

I will lose weight by this summer

This goal is likely realistically within your control, but it is not specific and does not have a measurable result. It also doesn’t have a definite date of accomplishment. Though it is attainable, it is probably too abstract to motivate you.

Effective goal:

I will weigh 135 lbs. by June 1, 20_ _ . (You insert the year)

This goal is specific, has a measurable result, has a definite timeline, and is likely realistically within your control. Whether it is attainable depends on the person’s situation and plan, but it uses the right format.

One way to set up your goals is to categorize them. You can have goals for your key life areas, outlined in my e-book Build Your World:

· Personal

· Health

· Financial

· Career

· Social

You can also arrange them by timeframe, such as

· 3-month

· 1-year, or

· 5-year goals

On the following page is an example of how you can establish and display your goals so that they are shown as simple, motivational, and achievable. I would encourage you to set goals for each of the five major life areas, and more, if you’d like.

Example Goal Sheet:

Goals To Be Reached by Day, Month, and Year ___/____/________ .

Personal

I will set 2 goals for each of the 5 major life areas in Build Your World.

I will create and arrange 20 document files in a filing cabinet in my home office.

Health

I will weigh 200 lbs. with 18% body fat.

I will participate in five 10-mile bike rides with Bikers Have Fun group.

Financial

I will save $1500 for my Emergency Fund.

I will open a Traditional IRA and contribute $2000 to it.

Career

I will apply to 10 management positions in my field of work.

I will take and pass an Intermediate Spanish class in the fall semester.

Social

I will join the Nature Lovers Club and attend 5 of their functions.

I will send 15 holiday greeting cards to my family and friends.

Take Action!

Now you’ve reached the final step in enriching your personal life: action!

It’s all well and good to have a mission statement and goals, but they aren’t going to help you much if you don’t take action on them, right?

Your last thing for you to do is take action steps toward each of your goals. And you need to begin them now, to avoid procrastinating, and wasting your time.

I recommend to:

1. Write down the action steps you need to do to reach each goal on a checklist.

2. Perform the first 1 of those action steps right away, to immediately make solid progress to that goal.

3. Check off those actions on your checklist that you wrote down the action steps on when you have completed them.

Example:

Social Key Life Area Goal:

I will join the Nature Lovers Club and attend 5 of their functions, by June 1, 2021.

Action Steps:

1. Look up contact information and call or e-mail Nature Lovers Club representative, and ask about joining.

2. Set aside time on calendar for attending 5 of their meetings by June 1, 2021.

Notice how the goal and action steps do not need to be complex. The objective is to achieve the goal, not make it complicated, so keep it simple.

Personal Goals– My Own Story

I have found personally that when I set a challenging goal for myself, it has tended to raise my level of performance and achievement in that area.

Setting the Goal

One example of this took place in my final undergraduate year of college, when I set a goal to earn straight A’s for the semester.

This was a daunting, yet inspiring goal, especially since I was a B average student, would be taking fifteen hours, and had never made straight A’s before in my life.

Making the Commitment

When I set the goal, I determined that I was going to do everything necessary to put myself in as successful a position as possible.

I modeled my actions after what I knew successful students did, such as taking organized notes, going to every class, and seeing professors on a regular basis.

I prepared myself for the need to be persistent and consistent in my studies over the course of the semester. I printed my goal on a sheet of paper, and posted it up where I would see it everyday.

Overcoming Obstacles and Being Consistent

Each passing week I experienced hurdles and difficulties that forced me to be vigilant in maintaining my focus and taking positive action.

Consistent monitoring of my progress allowed me to make necessary adjustments as time went on.

Success Breeds Success

Finally, at the end of the semester, I got a terrific feeling when I received my grades, which were all A’s. Because of this accomplishment, and by keeping the same plan the following semesters, I was soon able to graduate school with honors.

Conclusion

See, I knew what I had to so to be successful, but I had to hold myself accountable for the actions necessary to reach my goal, and be consistent with them everyday.

You can do the same with your goals. You can start easier, if you want, and, as you reach simpler goals, you will gain more confidence for reaching tougher ones. This will put you on your journey to success!

Below is an example page you can use as a template for your goals.

Example Goal Page:

Goals for Five Major Life Areas

Personal

1. _________________________________________________________________Date Started : _________________