Personal Goals

Your goals help you define your objectives and clarify the steps you need to take to accomplish your purpose. When you have clarified your goals in life, you will be one step closer to fulfilling your purpose. Goals can be personal or professional, tiny or grand, achieved tomorrow or within 90 days. They may even be aimed at leaving a legacy beyond your lifetime.

In Brian Tracy’s book Goals—How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, he encourages readers to do three things:

1. Write down your goals. It’s not enough just to have a vague idea of what you want to achieve. You need to develop specific goals and write them down.

2. Make plans to achieve your goals. For every written goal you need to determine three or four specific actions that will help you reach that goal.

3. Work on those plans every day. Most goals cannot be achieved by sporadic and occasional effort, but require daily attention and action.

It’s important to write your goals in the PRESENT TENSE, as though they have already happened. Follow each goal with five action steps that will allow you to reach the goal within the next 90 days. These 90-day goal sheets are the culmination of your “Focus Time” work. This exercise forces you to clarify your top goals for your personal and work lives, as well as your financial and long-term overall life goals.

Select a timeline for each goal so that you can prioritize the necessary action steps. Of course, some goals may require more action steps to accomplish than others. List as many steps as are needed.

Put the Brain to Work
Start and finish every day reviewing your goal worksheets. As you focus your attention on the goals you want to accomplish, your brain will put itself to work consciously and unconsciously to reach those goals. You will find yourself waking up with new ideas for how to solve a problem. Or you will be driving down the street when a burst of inspiration hits you so hard that you are forced to pull over to write down your ideas.

Did you do it?

Once you have clearly and deliberately determined what you want to accomplish in the next 90 days, you must take action every day. It only takes small steps to reach your future goals. When you choose to do what you say you will do, your success in life boils down to a series of simple “yes” or “no” questions.

The 7 Minute Life® is a choice. It is a choice you make every day. It all begins with your “Focus Time.” These first three 7 Minute Life Ideas are intended to help you prioritize your:

• Values
• Purpose
• 90-Day Goals

then you will be ready to begin to organize these ideas into daily action.