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The third types of goals you require are your personal and professional growth and development goals. These are the “how” goals. Learning and practicing new skills and behaviors are how you achieve the “what” in order to enjoy the “why.” By working on yourself, you become the kind of person who is capable of achieving your business, career and financial goals. As a result, you can achieve and enjoy your personal, family and health goals faster and easier. By working on all three types of goals simultaneously, you keep your life in balance, and continue moving onward and upward.
Number Four: You must decide upon your “Major Definite Purpose.”
This is the one goal in your life that is more important than any other. This is the one goal, the accomplishment of which will enable you to accomplish more of your other goals than any other single goal.
The selection of a major definite purpose for your life is the starting point of great success. This decision enables you to focus and concentrate your mental and physical energies on a single point, the one point that can have the greatest positive impact upon your life at this time. Deciding upon your major definite purpose, at each stage of your life, is one of the major responsibilities of adulthood.
How to Decide What You Really Want
There are several questions that you can ask yourself to help you determine your major definite purpose. These questions force you to think through who you are and what you really want to do with your life.
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Question One: What would you do differently, how would you change
your life, if you won one million dollars cash in the lottery tomorrow? If you became an instant millionaire, tax free, what would you do differently in your life from what you are doing today? What would you start doing that you are not doing right now? What would you stop doing? What would you do more of or less of? Where would you go? Who would you see? What is the first change that you would make if you had a million dollars cash in your hands right now?
Asking this question of yourself helps you to clarify what you really want in life. Most people hold themselves back, and sell themselves short, because they feel that they are limited or trapped financially. Because of this feeling of limitation, they never sit down and think through what it is they really wan. They develop self-limiting beliefs. They begin to see themselves as victims. According to Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania they develop “learned helplessness.” They feel that they are helpless and unable to change their situations because of their lack of money.
But when you ask yourself what you would do if you had a million dollars, you are really asking what you would do if you had no fears of failure. You are forcing yourself to decide how you would live your life if you had all the money that you really wanted? By imagining yourself free of financial worries, your mind clears and you see what you really want to be, have and do in the months and years ahead.
Question Two: Project yourself forward to the end of your life and
imagine writing your own biography. If you could design your life in 43
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advance, and write your own story, what would you want to happen in your life? What kind of a person do you want to become? What sort of things do you want to achieve? Imagine that you could write the script of your own life, and if you were not happy with the script, you could tear it up and write a new script.
Imagine that you could write your own eulogy, to be read to your friends and relatives at your funeral. What would you want it to say? What would you want people to think about you after you pass away? How do you want to be remembered by the most important people in your life?
When you ask these questions, and imagine writing your own life story, or your own obituary, you free up your mind to see what is really important to you. You develop “long-time perspective” and begin to become clear about what you really want to accomplish with your life.
Question Three: What one great goal would you dare to set for yourself if
you knew you could not fail? If you were absolutely guaranteed of success in any goal, short or long-term, big or small, what one goal would you commit yourself to accomplishing?
Your mind is remarkable. Something amazing happens between your head and your hand. The very fact that you can write out a goal clearly on paper means that you have the ability to achieve it somehow. Your desire is the only real limit on your potential. The only question is, “How badly do you want it?”
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Your ability to identify the one great goal that you would dare to commit yourself to if you were guaranteed of success is very often the best single indicator of your major definite purpose. This is the one goal you are meant to accomplish, and which can have the most positive impact on your life.
Question Four: What do you really love to do, at home or at work? What gives you your greatest feeling of importance? What accomplishments give you your greatest sense of achievement and satisfaction? If you could only do one thing all day long, what one task or activity would it be?
Psychologists have discovered that the activities that give you your greatest feelings of self-esteem are usually the tasks or activities that you are ideally suited to do as a life’s work. You will always love to do the things that you are most likely to have the natural talents and abilities to do extremely well.
Organizing your life and activities around your special talents and abilities is the key to peak performance and high achievement. When you find the job or position where your special skills meet the needs of the situation, you will make more progress in the next two years than you may have made in ten years working at something else.
Question Five: Use the “Quick List” method regularly. Take a pen in hand and give yourself 30 seconds to answer the question, “What are my three
most important goals in life right now?” Then quickly write down your three most important goals within 30 seconds. When you only have 30
seconds to write down your three most important goals, your answers will be as accurate as if you had 30 minutes or three hours. Your subconscious mind quickly discards all secondary goals. Your three most important aims or 45
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purposes will pop to the surface of your mind and appear on the paper in front of you.
You can then ask, “What are my three most pressing worries or concerns
in life right now?” Give yourself 30 seconds to write down these answers.
Once you have both sets of answers, you will have a snapshot of your current life. These answers will tell you a lot about yourself. First, your three goals will almost always be a financial goal, a health goal and a relationship goal. Second, your three goals will almost always be the solutions to your three main worries and concerns. In most cases, your three goals are the flipside of the coin of your three worries. You can resolve your problems by achieving your goals.
Analyze Your Life
You can give yourself this exercise in each key area of your life. You can quickly write down your three most important business goals, family goals, health goals and financial goals. You can give this exercise to members of your family or your coworkers. Give them 30 seconds to write down the answer to the question, “What are your three most important goals in life right now?”
Your three problems or worries represent your past, or where you are coming from, and moving away from. Your three goals represent your future, and what you are moving toward, both consciously and unconsciously. When you ask yourself these questions regularly, you will 46
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enjoy ever greater clarity about who you are and about what you really want.
You will get more and more ideas to achieve your goals and solve your problems.
Question Six: What specific steps will you have to take to achieve your
most important goals? A goal that is not accompanied by a detailed, organized list of actions that must be taken to accomplish it is like attempting to build a house without a blueprint. The more detailed your plans of action, the more likely you are to be achieve your goals, and in a shorter period of time.
Imagine No Limitations
Here is a simple but powerful exercise you can take to identify your goals and organize your life. Take out a sheet of paper and write down everything you would like to accomplish in your business and personal life over the next five years. Imagine that you have no limitations of time, money, talent, people, resources or abilities. When you write out your goals, imagine that whatever you write down is possible for you, as long as the goal is clear.