Yes or No, the daily decisions of life are constantly coming at you.
Quick… you only have a few seconds!
Blink!
How do you make up your mind?
Do you automatically make a split second decision or do you take a few seconds and compare your decision to a mental list.
A mental list of lifetime goals.
Do you ask… Does this decision further my goals?
Will this help or hinder my progress?
For example:
- If your goal is to lose weight, your decision to eat that large brownie in front of you may not be the best one.
- Watching that extra hour of TV may hinder your progress to your MBA.
- Your lifetime savings plan may be negatively affected by your frequent trips to the Casino.
The problem with this scenario is that most people have never written down long term or lifetime goals. When you don’t have something to shoot for it’s easy to pick up that brownie, turn on the TV, or pull the handle on the slot machine. Writing down your goals will help cement them in your mind.
With the end of the year quickly approaching, I have put together a quick and easy “Top Five,” lifetime goal sheets. It consists of twenty questions to ask yourself and you have a place to put your top five answers for each one.
Here are the questions…
- Top Five Things You Want To Do
- Top Five Things You Want To Accomplish
- Top Five Things You Want To Have
- Top Five Things You Want To Learn
- Top Five People You Want To Meet
- Top Five People You Want To Have Dinner With
- Top Five People You Want To Thank
- Top Five Mentors
- Top Five Places You Want To See
- Top Five Places You Want To Experience
- Top Five Places You Want To Live
- Top Five Places You Want To Eat
- Top Five Jobs You Want To Have
- Top Five Businesses You Want To Start
- Top Five Career Titles You Want
- Top Five People You Want To Work For
- Top Five Books You Want To Read
- Top Five People You Want To Impact
- Top Five Things You Want To Give
- Top Five Things You Want To Be Remembered For
While there are many goal setting worksheets available, I think you’ll find this one somewhat different and fun to fill out. As you start to write things down from a lifelong perspective you may find that common pre-conceived perceptions of what is really important may fade somewhat. I was really surprised what I wrote down as I followed the exercise.
Take about 20-30 minutes and quickly go through the list, writing down items as they come to mind. Don’t spend more than 15-20 seconds on any line. When you are done, go back and pick three to five items that stand out and write them down on the Goals Action List on the back page.
Write the goal down along with a completion date and then write down an action statement. Make the action statement specific and concise. Use positive statements.
When you have your action statements completed, fill in the 12 week, one year, and two year vision statements. Keep the statements positive and describe what you see after completing your goals.
This simple exercise can really have a positive effect on your life. The real secret to goal setting is to
- Write Them Down
- Make Them Specific
- Have a Completion Date
Take a few minutes today and download the Top Five Goal Sheets. Open them in Microsoft Word and print them on sturdy paper. Use a pen or fine tip marker to fill them in.
Once you have them written, you can use our Goal Setting Toolkit to take them with you wherever you go.
10 Responses to 'Lifetime Goal Setting'
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Great technique for goal setting!! Its unbelievable that so many of us are scared to sit down for 20 minutes with ourselves to find out what we really want
——————
My Positivity Blog http://positivityhub.com/
Thanks for the reply, Seeker. It is an amazing fact that most people never find the time to write down their goals. I’m hopeful that this simple “Top 5″ list will give people a quick and easy tool to get it accomplished. When I went through the list I was able to complete it in about 20 minutes. Some of the items were tougher than others. At times, I found myself skipping ahead to fill in the easy ones, and then coming back and filling in the blanks.
Once I had it done, I took different color highlighters and went back and found things that overlapped. This was the fun part. I took a yellow highlighter and marked things that I could do online. I then put the highlighted sheets side by side. It was easy to see keywords and concepts that popped out from the different categories.
These keywords made it easy to craft a couple of action statements and then put together a vision statement. While I have had many of these ideas in my head, it was easy to put them all together when I could see them side by side.
The whole process took less than an hour and now I have concrete action statements that lead to step by step achievement.
BTW… great blog!
John
[...] Lifetime Goal Setting | Success Begins Today One Wordpress Blog. … While there are many goal setting worksheets available, I think you’ll find this … Lifetime Goal Setting. Three Second Goals. Cut … [...]
[...] Success Begins Today Method. Just in time for this exercise, John Richardson at the Success Begins Today blog has a post on Lifetime Goal Setting. His method involves generating top 5 lists within 20 different categories (e.g. Top Five Jobs You Want to Have, Top Five People You Want to Thank). He also has some handy worksheets to help you generate your answers, and some others to generate action steps to accomplish them. This is one method I’ll come back to and evaluate. [...]
[...] One of the last methods I’m evaluating for developing a list of lifetime goals (at least in this iteration) is using a list of questions to help you think of lifetime goals. The questions I’m using come from a Success Begins Today blog post. [...]
[...] evaluation of using the Success Begins Today method for developing my life list is as follows. This method consists of answering some ‘Top [...]
[...] Success Begins Today Method. This method involves answering some open-ended questions regarding your life (what 5 things do you want to accomplish, what 5 things to you want to achieve, etc). For me, this was a good follow-up to brainstorming by looking at ideas for inspiration. It forced me to really think about what I wanted out of life. However, I would have a hard time starting with this method – I need to look at other ideas first. [...]
John,
Brian Tracy’s statement from the Psychology of Achievement ,”Success equals goals and all else is commentary”, continues to resonate with me over the years.
Of course, as your post alludes to, they need to be my goals and not someone elses. (And that is easier said than done. Maybe that’s why many folks don’t follow through with goal creating.)
I recently finished reading “Tuesdays With Morrie” (I know, it’s been out for a while!) and found it gave me a very humbling perspective on what it really meant to live – from someone who was dying from a wasting disease (ALS).
Then again, we all die a bit every day…
Carpes Diem!
regards
mark mcclure
[...] [...]
[...] you have trouble coming up with long term goals, our Top Five Goal Worksheet may help. This is a questionnaire designed to help you see what is really important in life and [...]