Goal Setting is for Life

A Goal is for Life Welcome to this Inner Circle audio. We're Chris and Susan Beasley and we're accountants and management consultants in our professional life, but we're also online entrepreneurs. In our professional lives, working with small businesses, every year we would get down to the task of planning and forecasting with the owners, setting targets to help them grow their business. We work mainly in the veterinary business niche, and one of the most well-known and used sayings, referring to animals of course, was, a dog is for life and not just for Christmas. And it's the same with forecasting and goal setting.

Goals are for life. And goals should be attached to a very compelling reason why. One that does not leave you an option for giving up. You see, goals are not light resolutions, and we'll get to why that is a little later. It's something serious that will have an impact on not just your life, but the lives of those you care about.

To achieve success and the goals you desire, you need to set what Darren Hardy of Success Magazines called, Big Hairy Audacious Goals, love that expression, and what Grant Cardone, an author of The 10X Rule, calls 10X Goal Setting. Surprisingly, however, unless you know how to approach goal setting, it can all go horribly wrong. And yes, we do talk from experience. In this audio, we want to share with you just how to go about goal setting as simply as possible, share some of our experiences, and I guess, some of our secrets, and to fill in some of the blanks. Here's a secret to creating the most powerful goals possible.

The difference that will make a difference to your life once you become aware of it. It's not actually something original either. Chris and I read a lot and do a lot of research, and we know a lot of stuff that is nice to share with other people. You see, Abraham Maslow talked about it 70 odd years ago, and Eastern religions have talked about it since time immemorial, and Napoleon Hill described it in very practical terms in his classic book, Think and Grow Rich, some 80 plus years ago. What was it?

Well, Maslow called it self-actualisation, Napoleon Hill called it the definite purpose or chief aim. You can call it whatever you like. But it's so important that we want you to begin your journey with this end in mind. When you're thinking about what you want from life, in any area, you must think above and beyond the obvious, and above and beyond the tangible, because the real drivers are not actually found in these. You won't be nearly as motivated by a thing as you will be by what that thing might give you.

That's where the real power lies in goal setting. Let's use the example of money. You might want more money, but only because that's a vehicle to do something else. It might be an end to financial worries, physical hardship, etc. Or like for Chris and myself, it's to be able to travel all around the world to see different communities, different people, environments that we've never seen other than on videotape and on film.

And we really and truly want to do that. And it's the money that we make that allows us to have that final result. You see, having lots of money can solve all kinds of problems, but it's what it will bring you in return that will drive you to seek opportunities to draw it into your life. Having financial abundance is more about freedom than anything else. Freedom to choose how you spend your time and who with.

Freedom to go where you want when you want. Freedom to live your life according to your own agenda. Freedom to do what you want without having to worry about how to pay for it. Freedom to help others without having to count the cost first. Freedom to live in the moment.

Look for the end result. The ultimate benefit that you will enjoy when you achieve your goal. Keep asking yourself why you want it. Ask yourself the question, what will that give me? What will that allow me to do?

And make each answer bigger, better than the last. Keep asking until the only answer you can give makes you want to cry or jump for joy. And when you get this far, you'll know you've got the real reason you want that thing. Then you'll be ready to think about goal setting. Goals that will inspire you so much that achieving them is no longer a possibility, but an inevitability.

You see, the true secret to goal setting, this is something we've learnt over the years, is totally changing your thinking, changing your mindset. So how do you change your thinking? Well, it doesn't happen overnight. You need to have access to positive, inspiring people. And read and listen to people of influence such as Anthony Robbins or audio recordings just like this.

But positive mindset can be learned, but it does take practice. And you know what they say, practice does make perfect. And you don't have to be super intelligent or have exceptional talents to achieve success. In fact, if you look at some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, such as Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, you'll find they were not super intelligent or super talented. They just had a very positive outlook on life and a mindset for achievement.

So let's get into goal setting. When is the right time to start? Well, luckily, goal setting is not like setting a New Year's resolution, one that only happens one time every year. With goal setting, there is no right or wrong time, no mythical moment that is just right. It needs doing and it needs doing now.

Or if you're not careful, years of your life will slip by without you ever finding the right time. If you want a better life, then you're going to have to make that time right now, whenever it is that you're listening to this. And it's the perfect time for you to take the decision to map out the future you want, the life you desire and deserve, and the success which is rightly yours. Now, let's be honest. You might not know how to achieve it right now.

You might not even believe it's possible at the moment either. But think about it. You didn't know how to walk or even how to talk once upon a time. You learned. And as you learned, so did your beliefs about what you were capable of.

So we want you to do this exercise. Think of something you believe you're really good at. It can be anything at all, work-related or a hobby or a sport. Something you're proud to tell people you're good at. Now look back into the past before you knew how to do that thing well.

Remember just how you thought about that thing. How did you feel about it back then? What things did you say to yourself about it? Did you believe you'd ever be able to do it without feeling apprehensive or nervous about it? Did you ever dream that you'd be good at it?

Probably not. Yet here you are, not knowing, and therefore believing that this is something you can do now and do well. I'll tell you a story about... where are we now? About 18 years ago, Chris and I decided that we wanted to learn to ski.

I have no idea why, other than we played badminton together and our badminton club were having a ski holiday. And we thought, you know what, let's learn to ski. So of course, that was something we had no clear idea of what to do, but the end result seemed rather nice, going to some beautiful mountainous resort with all that snow, sunshine, and the odd glass or two of wine. But the thing is, we'd never done it before. But it didn't stop us going ahead and learning how to do it so that we could achieve that final end goal.

No, we didn't know how to put on a pair of skis. We didn't know how to stand on snow or any of that kind of stuff. So we took lessons before we even got to the results, or we booked our holiday. So by the time we arrived there, we felt we had some of the basics. But I can tell you, it's nothing like, a dry slope is nothing like standing on real snow for the first time.

Yeah, of course we felt apprehensive. We went out the very first day before our lesson. It was in Italy. We were going to have an Italian ski instructor. So there's another challenge.

But we went early. We had a little practice first. We put the skis on. We stood on the slopes. And do you know what?

It worked. We could actually ski. And that's exactly what we mean. You see, there are many things in life that seem so big and unattainable. You can't ever imagine thinking about how you could achieve them.

And there are many reasons for the same reason that we settle for what we have. And we make lots of excuses to ourselves to cover those fears. Things like, I don't have time. I can't afford it. It's not possible.

That's not for people like me. It's too hard. My friends will laugh at me. My family won't like it. The list goes on and on.

And yes, we have been through all that because our story is we're accountants, management consultants. And we had our own very successful business. We were self-employed. We had a very, very good business. We had good money.

But we didn't have any life. And we had to make a decision, one that we made five years ago, to completely change. And we made that decision and we became online entrepreneurs. And we're sharing that story with you because, you know, we had to... We had all of those things going through our mind at the time.

But we didn't let them get the better of us. And we really and truly don't want them to get the better of you either. Because all of those things that I've just shared with you, they're actually just unconscious excuses that you've come up with to keep you safe from the risk of failure and the risk of disappointment. They're the things that keep you in your comfort zone, which ironically can be anything but comfortable. It's not fun being so broke you can't go out and buy new things or pay the bills.

For us it was no fun working 60 hours a week, having a good income but no time to enjoy the money that we were earning. And things had to change. You see, sticking with what's familiar may keep you safe, but it will also keep you from leading the life of your dreams. You've heard some of our story. Was it an easy decision to make?

No, it wasn't an easy decision to take. And did some people say it wasn't possible? Did some people say you can't do that? Yes, they did. But we made a decision that for us to have the kind of life that we wanted, we had to make a decision and we had to make it then.

Or we were never going to make it at all. And if you're in that same position, I want you to think about that really carefully. And it goes back to why we don't want you to think about making resolutions, resolutions that usually don't last. We want you to think instead about setting goals and why goals are very different from resolutions. You see, for us to make that change and make that decision that we were going to become online entrepreneurs and no longer have our accountancy and management consultancy business, we made a conscious decision and gave our clients six months' notice, giving up a very, very good income because we knew we had something else in mind.

We knew there was a better life and we knew there was a better way than working until the grave, basically. We're no spring chickens, as we're very often heard to say. At the time of recording this audio, I'm 59, Chris is 60. You know, we have a life beyond work. And if we'd not made that decision and set ourselves a goal, that goal that in six months' time we would have quit all of our clients, left them to their own devices, well, not quite, and got on with our own life on our own terms, then we'd still be where we were five years ago.

So you have to think about what your formula for success is going to be. Does having a perfect life sound like something you're looking for? Could you do with more abundance in some areas of your life? Do you have a list of things you want to accomplish? Well, we pretty much guess you do if you're listening to this audio.

The thing with goal setting that we notice both professionally and personally is that people often worry that things might go wrong or put themselves down when things don't go according to plan. But sadly, they rarely celebrate successes. Instead, they say to themselves, well, I made a mess of that, well, that didn't go very well, or something along those lines. In a way, they set themselves up to fail as they don't give themselves a pat on the back or a positive affirmation. Everyone has goals, aims or objectives they strive to meet in their work or in life in general.

Whether these are conscious or not, it doesn't matter. You may want to earn more money, drive a bigger car, have a nice house, or just enjoy your life and work, or like we want to do, travel all over the world. But without a clear plan or strategy to get there, it just makes it more difficult to achieve. And we know from experience that it's easy to drift along. But if you make a conscious decision in your life that you are going to live one that is inspired and one that you enjoy, you can do this.

Another example was when we were writing our very first book, many people said to us, Chris and Susan, that's exactly what we want to do one day. But by us setting our goals to write that book, we achieved exactly what we set out to achieve. And even today, we still know some of those people who said they wanted to do that too, and they haven't written their book yet. So here are some strategies you can use to enable you to get what you want. And we suggest you listen through to this end of this audio first, and then listen to it again with a pen and notepad and write down some of the exercises and some of the things we're going to share with you.

That's how we learn, and it might be a way for you to learn too. So the first thing is know what you want rather than what you don't want. Now, this may seem very strange, but please bear us out. The most successful people in life know what they want rather than what they don't want. And we know from spending time with business partners and students over the past five years, that many people find it hard to see their way forward.

They know what they don't want to have in their life, either in the present or the future. But until they know what they do want, it makes it difficult to have a clear plan to make changes. On the other hand, if you do know what you don't want, it's a good place to start. If you don't want to be out of work, stressed, fed up with your job, or like us, working 60 hours a week, working for clients at their beck and call, even on our holiday on the ski slopes, then go ahead and ask yourself, what do you want instead? Secondly, have a plan and take action.

When you know what you do want, then you can work out how to get what you want. Make sure your goals are specific. We'll come to that in a moment. And that means that the activity has to have a clear purpose, that you can achieve it realistically, and that you have a time frame in which the activity has to be completed. Keep a journal to record your successes.

We've always kept journals. And the purpose of this is to record the things in your life that go well. Things that you can look back on and celebrate. So, example, think about what's gone well that day. Think about something you've learnt.

Maybe even something you've learnt from this audio today. Who has been your inspiration? This way you have a motivational record of what's gone well, whenever you need a boost. And it can also remind you of how... you've developed your skills.

Gosh if we look back five years ago what we know now and what we didn't know then but can look back in our journal where we've written something we've learnt, maybe a tool we've got, a resource we found, we can actually go back at that and we can share it now forward. I mean it's absolutely fantastic feeling and I really urge that you do it. Enjoy the journey and the success you have along the way. This is a really important one. If you're always striving for the next big thing you're never going to take time to enjoy the individual successes along the way.

Take time to focus on the things that have gone well and the good things that have happened to you. I know when we first started online five years ago and our mentor took us through the process he told us what to do and he said trust me in six months time you will have made your first sale and at that time we were selling what are known as big-ticket large commission online training programs and we had to have absolute faith in what he said and you know what he was absolutely right and in six months we did have our first sale and we knew that everything that we had done up until that time, the goals we'd set ourselves, individual goals we'd set ourselves and achieved led to that final moment. Now things are very different these days you don't have to wait six months and it just shows you how the internet has changed but you know that's just an example of what actually happened in our life so you can see exactly what's possible. But you know sometimes you have very big goals that need to be broken down into chunks and we'll come on to how you do that a little later on in this audio but you do have to break your successes down into chunks as well and I'll tell you a little later about a skiing accident I had in 1999 where my ultimate goal was to be able to ski again and the chunking down had to begin with dealing with the physical problem and then the mental problem to get to that goal so I'll come back to that later. But onwards with goal setting we follow a process that we've always worked with our business partners and our students and actually how we work with our clients in our business and they're based on principles called as SMART goals and SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed and I'm going to go through and give you a little overview on each of those individual principles so that you can see how that when they all come together they're going to help you to achieve the goals that you want in your life.

So let's look at S for Specific first of all. All goals are more likely to be achieved when you've made them specific. Don't try and state them in some vague terms for example rather than as we would like to do say I want to live by the beach, state specifically in which town and country and what sort of house that you would like to live in. So one of our dreams is to live in Florida, live in Florida right on the beach where we can hear the ocean, look out at the sunsets, enjoy the weather, we'd like it to be have a lovely open-air veranda and a swimming pool. So that's how you make it specific.

People often refer to setting specific goals using the example of weight loss because it is easy to understand it so I will give you that example here. So rather than I want to lose weight be specific about how much so I want to lose 10 pounds. If your income goal is related like that think about how much income you want and buy when. It's no good saying I want to earn a million dollars without having some specific goal in mind when it's going to be and of course how you're going to get there. M is for measurable.

Now this follows on very closely from specific. It's about how you'll know when you've achieved that goal and if it's an income goal let's stick with that for a moment then you need to clearly be able to see that you're progressing towards achieving it. If it's a weight goal a set of scales are going to show you're on track and losing weight. A is for achievable. You may think it's unlikely you'll actually reach the outcome you want so take a step back and ask yourself whether you could actually get to where you want in the time you want and with the amount of work and dedication you're putting in.

For instance there's no point in stating as I said earlier that you'll earn a million dollars in say six months with a plan or without a vehicle for achieving it. Likewise you're not going to lose ten pounds in a week. Be realistic. R is for realistic. This goes with the last tip of achievable.

Ask yourself if your time frame is a reasonable one. Is it too long? Is it too short to get to where you want to? Some people you see spend their whole lives regretting they didn't become something or someone who they could have become and we could have easily fallen into that trap too if we'd not made that decision, set ourselves goals and followed through on them. It may seem strange but to make the point it's no good wanting to be say a ballet dancer if you're quite tall and clumsy and like I am past the age for a good dancer to perform.

That would be as much unachievable as unrealistic. So the last one in our smart goals principle is timed. Make sure you define the date by when you want to achieve your goal. Put it in your diary or somewhere where you can see it and have check-in dates such as how finished by this date. In this way you can keep yourself on track to get moving towards your ultimate goal.

When we first came online there wasn't all the easy tools to build websites like you have today. So like you have WordPress and you have blogs that you can get at a click of a button. When we came online we had to build a website and believe me that was no easy task. Chris had to build it. It took him months and months and months and I said at the end of it I didn't like it.

So that didn't go down too well. But you know it's really important that you know how long it's going to take you to achieve something. We just thought it would be dead simple because our mentor said to us oh just get yourself a website. So we thought well it must be easy to do. But actually it took a lot longer than we thought.

But when we did some research we worked out it was going to take us about six weeks because we were working part-time and we were still managing our other business. But we did write down and write our success on a whiteboard actually in our office at home. When we had achieved half finish creating that website and even though it still looked very messy and I still didn't like the color at least we had got halfway towards our goal. So the thing is if you've been setting your goals efficiently and doing all the right things in relation to them being smart goals you know that's our specific measurable achievable realistic and timed yet still seem unable to achieve what you set out to do then it's very possible that you may have set goals that are far too big. Right at the beginning we did say make them big but they may have been far too big.

You see big is good but realistic is better. Look let's be honest you might get a sense that you'll never be able to achieve your desired outcome because the journey gets that getting there is somewhat difficult and perhaps even interminable in your eyes. And that's why we're going to suggest that you do something called chunking and that's chunking your big goals into smaller goals. So just like when we were creating our website we had to look at all the different aspects of it chunks and look at doing each one of those chunks bit by bit until we achieved our final goal which was our website. So here are some ways to break big goals down into small goals.

Start by stating what your big goal is and write that down at the top of the page and you're going to do this the second time you run through this audio if you take our advice on that. Now ask yourself the question what must I get done before I can achieve that goal and write the answer in the line below. Whatever answer you write just keep repeating that question again and again until you've listed the steps or chunks to take in order to reach the big goal. The big goal is really your vision of how you want things to be if you could make the necessary changes. The steps you write down below the other are the series of goals to achieve in order to reach that vision and the secret of this process being a success is making the initial steps so simple that you can do them almost without any effort.

You may reach that easy first step at the end of the page or may need to continue for longer. We don't know because we don't know how big your goal is but you only stop the process of chunking down when there is no answer to the question what must I do before I can do that. When you've finally gone through the sequence of smaller goals and finally got to the big goal then you'll be familiar with chunking down and you can do it again and again and again with each goal that you set in your life and in your business. Now I said I'd come back to my skiing accident when I spoke about it earlier on in this audio and I'll use this an example of chunking down goals. So back in 1999 I had a very serious ski accident totally my own fault can't blame anybody but myself but the long and the short of it was that I went over the edge of a piste and fell into a bit of a hole lost my skis went flying through the air and broke my right arm into 15 tiny little pieces oh and I also broke my leg at the same time so it was quite serious but even so skiing had been mine and Chris's passion it's what we lived for and really was one of the main reasons we decided to change from our management consultancy business to having a business online which would give us the freedom and the income to travel around the world and spend more time skiing that being one of our passions but let's take us through take you through the process of the how that chunking works so first of all having got back to the UK after spending a week in a French hospital I had to go through the process of rehabilitation both physically and mentally because don't forget I have broken my arm in all those little pieces it was fitted together with a plate and pins and my right arm was strapped across my chest I also had broken my leg and the only way to get around was on my left leg and do things with my left arm which was very difficult even trying to walk trust me with one crutch holding on trying to walk was so amazingly difficult anyway long and the short of it was and the funny story here that the surgeon in France actually gave me my letter for my doctor here in the UK and roughly translated from French said that I should give up gymnastics for at least six months well I don't think there was going to be any gymnastics going on but actually what he mean was that I should not go to the gym or partake in any sporting activities well chance would be a fun thing wouldn't it anyway the chunking down to achieve my final goal which believe it or not was to get back skiing again was to find a physiotherapist or a physical therapist as some of you may call them in across the pond in the United States and to begin work on strengthening my arm getting my balance back and conquering some of the fears I had around that had to find a rehabilitation trainer to help me regain my physical fitness and get through all of that just to get through normal everyday things to be perfectly honest also had the mental rehabilitation to go through as well because I did actually lose a lot of confidence because of what had happened and the circumstances of the accident which would take longer than this audio to explain but basically it gave me a fear of falling even from very small steps like steps on a stair so part of my rehabilitation involving setting goals to learn to rebalance my body and not have a fear of falling so I had to get on things like wobble boards and now probably the famous Swiss ball that you might hear about if you know us because it's something I do at the gym regularly and set myself targets of how long I can balance on it but that Swiss ball seriously became a lifeline during my recovery and I'm forever grateful to both my trainer and to that little piece of equipment that helped me get through but long story short this process took something over two years and I didn't get my final goal to get back on skis and back on the piece until two years later that goal was so big and so compelling and it was the only reason that I didn't give up at any time so there you have it chunking your goals works and the next time you have a big goal which is a challenge to complete you're going to be fully competent in the process and be able to get it done much more quickly moving on be clear about what and who is involved in your goal thinking about where when how and with whom do you want to get the goal it's fine for someone else to benefit from the results of you achieving your goal or if you want to share your success with someone else but look it's important you don't depend on anyone else to help you achieve it this is because everybody has their own agenda their own issues their own desires their own commitments and you don't want your goal slipping away from you relying on someone else's help to get it when you give the responsibility for achieving your goals away you give away your power to achieve them too and we don't want that keep the power 100% with you where it belongs being only accountable to yourself here's another exercise once you can answer yes to all the following questions you can go ahead and prepare for your visualization have you chosen the area of your life that you're going to work on and improve with this fantastic life-changing goal now are you clear about exactly what you want have you got a good understanding of why you want this goal and what it will mean to you at an emotional level do you know what will have to happen for you to realize that you've achieved this goal have you thoroughly considered all the consequences of you reaching this goal are you clear about who and what will be involved in your goal now we want you to imagine that moment in the future when you realize that you've accomplished the goal you're about to construct we've achieved many of our goals following this process but of course we've got lots more to achieve yet and remember this is an ongoing process and you get to keep adding to the list as you go as soon as you see things you've planned come into fruition you're going to be jumping at the bit to add to that list with even bigger more exciting on audacious things the choice is only limited really by your imagination the vision for one of our personal goals focuses around the moment we arrive in Borneo at the Aranyu Tang Sanctuary this is something Chris has had in his dreams for so long and he talks about it all the time but I'm going to use it as an example so you can see how you create this vision yourself this visualization yourself so it goes like this we can feel the humidity of the rainforest and hear the sound of the birds in the trees as we walk into the enclosure and get to meet our first baby Aranyu Tang and realize this is the moment we've been dreaming of actually even as I'm sharing this with you I find myself smiling because it seems like it really is true and it's there and happening the thing is the key is knowing and experiencing how we will feel in that moment and the other senses add to the realism of the goal and increase the desire to achieve it just as the example I've just shared with you so as you set your goals and build your dream we want you to notice some very specific things how does it feel to have achieved this goal what does it feel like to finally have this?

What do you look like? What are you wearing? Who else is there? You see, as well as creating an image of what you want to have, we want you to imagine who will be there with you. Who do you want to be there to share that experience, that joy?

Whose presence will make it even more special? Now make sure to write it all down as a story. Pick a date in the future by which time you want to have arrived at and achieved your goal. And begin your story by stating what the date is, that's the date in the future. Begin your story as though you are looking back from that date in the future to now and describing everything.

I'll say that again, begin your story as though you are looking back from that date in the future to now and describing everything. Like this, it's the 30th of December, 2015. That's the date by which you want to achieve the goal, for example. And as I look back to 30th of December, 2014, I remember. The more details you add to the story, the better the goal will be embedded into your unconscious mind and the more sure it will seem.

Now just enjoy the process. In conclusion, set yourself a crazy stupid goal for yourself, something so big and exciting that it can't help but get you out of bed each morning. As a fact, most people drastically overestimate what they can accomplish in a week, but they drastically underestimate what they can accomplish in a year. So come up with something really big you want to accomplish and write it down. Make a 12 month plan, once you've established your crazy stupid goal that is, then break down the actions needed to accomplish that goal into monthly chunks and we showed you how to do that.

Look we all know life happens, so decide on one or two things you can accomplish by the end of each month and commit to incorporating it into your daily and weekly task list. We know you can fulfil your dreams, become successful and achieve the wealth you deserve. It all starts with baby steps and a positive mindset. Just don't give up. Don't make resolutions, make goals.

Goals are for life. Goals never fail, only failure to implement goals. Thank you for listening.