(Originally written and published on Jan 4, 2010)

Happy 2010 and welcome to the new decade! Today’s article is about choosing the area of your life to transform for this brand new year.

By now, some of you are probably armed with your list of 2010 goals to make it a blast. Some of you may not have thought about your goals yet. If you haven’t done so, it’s not too late to do it now! Take out a pen and paper, and spend the next 15 min (or more if you need to) writing everything it takes to make your 2010 the best year ever yet.

You might want to read Part-3 of Goal Achievement Series on Establish Your Goals, which shares 10 key principles behind powerful goals.

Finish the exercise before continuing on with this article. I’ll wait for you here until you are done.

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Done? How many goals did you come up with? When I did the 2010 goal setting exercise with my clients, most of them came up with 10+ goals. I personally have a list of 14 big goals for the year. The most I’ve encountered so far is 40 goals, and it’s by a 16 year old girl!

In general, the more goals you set and strive for, the more you will get out of life (assuming these are empowering goals). However, it’s also obvious the more goals you set, the harder it will be to achieve all, simply because the increased number of goals will divert your energy. That’s where setting a focus for your year comes in.

Power of a Yearly Focus

Setting a focus for your year means to identify an area of your life you want to disproportionately focus on improving throughout the year. This focus can be an area of your life which you feel you have been neglecting in the past and want to start working on. It can be an area which, when improved upon, will enable you to have the best experience for the year.

When you set a focus for the year, it doesn’t mean you can only have goals in that area. You can continue to set other goals that may be out of the focus, just that a majority of your goals will be related to your focus in some way or another. For example, perhaps your focus for 2010 is to improve yourself, and then you will have different goals related to that, such as to be more productive, more sociable, increase your income, lose weight, and so on.

Your focus can be anything, from:

1. An area in your life (career, health, finance, spiritual, family, friends, love, recreation, personal growth)
2. A skill (communication, writing, public speaking, dancing, swimming, running, etc)
3. An aspect of yourself you want to cultivate/strengthen (self-love, being sociable, confidence, charisma, productivity, organization, discipline, having integrity, responsibility, etc)
4. A certain message you want to convey to yourself/the world

Benefits of Choosing A Yearly Focus

Why choose a focus for the year? There are two key benefits, really:

Benefit # 1: Transformational Results in Area of Focus

When I was in my brand management role in my past company, we would design every marketing campaign around a single big idea rather than separate different messages. It had been repeatedly proven that a single, powerful big idea registered with more people and triggered more action than say, having 4-5 different messages, which typically confused consumers and resulted in no action taken in the end.

Similarly for goals, by choosing 1 core focus for our year, you accelerate the achievements and progress within the area in the year, resulting in transformational results. The beauty of a focus is that by being conscious and aware of your focus, it helps you to move ahead with much more clarity. This clarity will drive you to achieve tremendously in this area. Compared to if we were to have a laundry list of 40 goals in some 10 different areas – nothing’s ever going to get done! Chances are, we are going to get overwhelmed before mid-point or we are going to totally forget about the goals we set and revert back to our past behaviors!

Benefit # 2: Sets In Place the Improvements Made

Besides getting more results, it also sets in place the improvements we have achieved in that area. Many people often have the problem of setting goals, achieving results in those goals, then having what they have achieved in those goals after they shift their attention else where. Yet when you spend a whole of 1 year working on an area, the improvements you obtain in that area are going to be deeply set in at the end of the year.

Let’s say you make health a focus area and you achieve a tremendous amount of improvements in the year. Throughout the year, you improve your diet, you exercise regularly, you wake up early every day. By the end of the year, not only would you have made dramatic leaps in your health, but the changes would also become a staple in your life because the actions have turned into habits. You are now more ready to focus on new areas and introduce new changes in your life.

My Focus Areas Through The Years

2007-2008 – Personal Growth

For me, in 2007-2008, my focus area was personal growth through corporate work in my ex-company. Throughout the course of my work, I was consistently requesting for the biggest and the best projects to stretch myself. I strove to exceed expectations for every piece of work I was given. I signed up for the best trainings within the company so I was ahead in my learning curve. I also connected with the seniors in the company to learn from them.

In the end, I was able to rotate across 3 different assignments in my 2 years in the company, when the norm in the company was 1 assignment per 2 years. All in all, this allowed me to gain a massive amount of knowledge and learnings, which then enabled me to quit and pursue my passion thereafter.

2009 – Establishing My Passion

In 2009 which was last year, my focus area was establishing my passion to the world. As a result, majority of my biggest achievements last year was centered on my passion, such as setting up my training business, being featured on media, establishing Personal Excellence, becoming a full-time life coach, speaking and giving workshops and so on.

Because I was so fervently pursuing my passion, it made me realize 2 things which I shared in my previous 2009 reflections article: #1 Helping others is what I want to do for the rest of my life. #2 The reason why I do what I do every day is because of you.

2010 – People, Love and Relationships

This year, my focus is going to be centered around people, love and connections. Putting other people’s needs in the forefront, loving everyone wholly and unconditionally, and establishing meaningful, authentic and real relationships. On hindsight, this is definitely no coincidence especially having discovered the driving force behind pursuing my passion is really helping others grow (see above).

So what is the scope of this focus? Everything, really.

• The World: Reaching out to even more people to help them live their best life. Knowing my readers, clients and workshop participants more deeply as individuals.
• Familial Bonds: Strengthening my connections with my parents who have always been forever doting on me since young, yet I have hardly ever reciprocated the love.
• Friendship: Knowing my current friends even better as individuals.
• Networking: Getting out there and knowing others better. Online: connecting with more fellow personal development bloggers and knowing current blogger friends better as individuals.  Offline:  Connecting with more experts and counterparts in the industry.
• Leadership: In terms of having a vision, carrying it true, and leading people (all of you) in the journey of growth.
• Love: In the past, I had been emotionally closed towards relationships. The past few years have seen the unlocking of these bonds, one after another. I look forward to uncovering and addressing more of my blind spots in this area.

To be honest, I’m really excited about this because people and relationships is something I had never overtly set as a goal in the past. Since then, the past 4 years from 2006-2009 have been a long journey of inner growth, from understanding myself, uncovering blind spots, increasing performance, surpassing personal limits, increasing my consciousness, living in the now, and many, many more. Having done so much inner growth and understood myself to a certain degree, I believe I’m now ready to transfer my attention to the outside world by focusing on the others around me.

In fact, after making the decision to focus on this goal, several blind spots have become apparent to myself. For one, my responsibility towards others. While I’ve always been responsible for my own self, I have not effected the same rigor to others around me. In retrospect, I’m beginning to realize my actions implicate others more than I have recognized.

Another blind spot is empathy towards others. I feel there is room for me to be more empathetic towards others – being sensitive to them, putting their needs first, understanding their feelings and knowing them as individuals. I look forward to seeing more blind spots and addressing them as I move ahead.

While I still have other goals in other areas (such as losing some more pounds toward my ideal weight, learning to manage my energy to maximize my productivity output), the focus on people and connections is the key anchor that holds all my goals together. This will be the guiding point for my daily thoughts and behaviors every day in 2010.

With this new focus for this year, be prepared to see more articles on people and relationships this year too.

Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform This Year?

How about you? What is your 2010 Focus? What is the key area in your life you want to transform this year to make it the best year ever?

As mentioned above in point #4, your focus can be a message itself. One of my readers was telling me that 2009 had been a year where he had grown a lot as a person – particularly on the professional front and his health. His focus for 2010 is boost his productivity through “focusing on the big things“.

Another reader, Kimberly, said that her 2009 had been focused on others, and she now intends for 2010 to be “a year of focus for herself”, which I thought is a fabulous idea! To be able to truly help others, you need to first meet your own needs first and foremost. One of my clients’ focus for this year is “To live life to the fullest”, which is the central message behind all the 2010 he is going to achieve.

There is no right or wrong answer on what your focus is. It just needs to (i) be a single theme you want to focus on in the whole year and (ii) resonate with what you feel is  biggest block towards living your best life this year.

Decide on your 2010 focus, then start living true to it immediately. You will find that with a focus for the year, everything starts becoming a whole lot more coherent and things flow more naturally. Focus on this area and target to make the biggest progress and evolution this year than you ever have before.

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Related Posts

• Keep Your End Objective In Mind
• 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals
• 2009 Reflections: 2 Biggest Things I Learned, 15 Key Highlights and A Big Thank You To You
• My Review of 2010 (Big Thank You and Onward to 2011!)

To keep your end objective in mind is crucial for conscious living. It can be divided into two phases: 1) Identify your end objective 2) Evaluate everything against your objective.

1) Identify Your End Objective

Whenever you are starting a new task, activity or goal, always be clear on what your end objective is. Why are you doing this? Is it serving some larger meaning? Where does it fall in the larger context?

This is the same as the second habit in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is Begin With The End In Mind.

There are 3 kinds of end objectives you need to be clear on:

1. Life objective: What is your purpose in life?
2. Goal objective: What is the objective of your goal?
3. Task objective: What is the objective of this task you are doing?

Each objective sets the context for the item below it. For example, your life purpose sets the overall context for your life and your goals. Your goals sets the context for tasks, activities and things you do everyday. Thus, the tasks you do everyday should be a subset of your goals, while your goals should be a subset of your life purpose.

Your purpose is like the grandmother of all end objectives. If you are unclear on your purpose, the other things that follow will be ambiguous as well. You can be pursuing goals, but they will just be set against a hazy context. On that same note, if you are unclear on your goals, the tasks you do will also be directionless. You can be setting a lot of targets for your tasks but they will add up to be a random clump of to-do items.

I have already written extensively on the importance of identifying objectives, so I will refer you to the articles instead:

1. Importance Of Having Life Objective: Why Should You Have A Purpose? Here’s 5 Solid Reasons Why
2. Importance Of Having Goals: 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals

I have also covered how you can identify these objectives, which you can find here:

1. Identify Your Life Objective: How To Discover Your Real Life Purpose
2. Identify Your Goals: Goal Achievement: Establish Your Goal

When you have your life objective and goal objectives clear, you will be able to identify your task objectives clearly too. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s imagine you are clear on your life and goal objectives and subsequently, your task objectives. Say you are going to a class today (a task). What is your task objective? Is it to maximize your learning? If it is, then do everything within the class to give you the best learning. Sit in the front rows, listen intently, note down all the pertinent points, engage actively in class, ask when you have any questions. Don’t go into the class and day dream, because that is not your task objective.

If your task objective for the class is just to have your attendance marked and you want to do other things, then act according to that objective. Go to the class, sit all the way in the back, take out the other things you want to do and do them while the class is going on. Engage in the class from time to time if you feel it helps ward off the teacher’s guard on you. All in all, act in accordance with your objective. Don’t go half-way because you’re just wasting your time in the process. Either go full-way or don’t do it.

It also applies for activities outside of work-related goals too. For example, let’s say you are going to dinner with your colleagues. What is the objective of doing that? Is it to foster stronger relationships with them? If so, spend the evening with that in mind. Understand what’s going on in their work and lives, provide a listening ear if they need any; at the same time share with them what’s been happening with you and make them a part of your life too. Engage in topics and activities that will help both of you connect better. Don’t get side tracked by other things that may be on your mind. Make the most out of the activity/task you are doing.

2) Evaluate Everything Against Your Objective

As with everything in life, different obstacles will start emerging in your path as you pursue your objectives. Multiple options start getting dangled in front of you, each with its own set of pros and cons. Forkroads appear. Different considerations start seeping in. As if that isn’t enough, people start giving their own opinions and take on your situation. In no time, you start becoming confused by everything that is before you.

When that happens, just recall what your end objective is – the very same objective you identified in the beginning. Assess everything that you see against it. Evaluate your options in terms of how well it serves your objective. If you find that the option does not meet your objective, throw them away. You will find that decision making becomes condensed into a very easy and simple task.

Running PersonalExcellence.co

For example, my # 1 objective running this site is to help others achieve their highest potential. This guides all the decisions related to it. As I run this site every day, I get various different requests. Advertisers contact me from time to time to place advertisements. Program developers request me to do reviews for their softwares. Other webmasters approach me to write guest posts for their sites.

Without my end objective in mind, it’s easy to get thrown off by the various things that occur. For example, I can ask a truckload of questions to each of the requests. To the advertisers, I can be asking: “How much is sponsorship for the advertisement? How long is the campaign? How many ads are you looking to serve? What is the size of the ads?” To the program developers, I can be asking “How is the incentive for me to write the review? How long do you want the review to be?” To the other webmasters, I can be asking “How much incremental traffic can I get from writing a guest post on your site? How long are your guest posts? When do you need it?” For each of these requests, I will have different considerations, such as time, money, resources, the benefits and downsides.

However, when I’m clear on my end objective, everything becomes very simple. I always start off every decision making process by evaluating them against my objective. Do the advertisements correspond to the theme of personal development? Are the softwares in line with personal productivity? Do the other webmasters’ sites themes have an overlap with personal development?

If the answer to any of these questions is a ‘No’, I will turn down the request, without need for further thought. Sure, it may give me more money. Sure, it may give me more traffic. But the primary objective must always be met before anything else should be considered.

Some of you may be quick to point out that without earning money, I cannot sustain this blog forever. That’s entirely true – and this makes earning a secondary objective that is necessary in order to achieve my end objective. Earning money will thus be the activity goal that is needed to achieve my objective goal of helping others achieve their highest potential; i.e. it is the means to my end.

Seeking a new job

Another example which I would like to share and readers will be able to relate to is looking for a job. As you may be aware, I’m planning to return to work after a few months. In the past few weeks, I have been keeping my options open, connecting with head hunters and my previous company to see what’s available in the near term (my ex-company kept the door open for me to return when I left last year).

If we look at what my objective for returning to a day job is, it is to be able to pursue my personal development work (i.e. PersonalExcellence.co, my coaching/speaking activities, etc) without having to worry about financial considerations. Based on that objective, my top priorities for my day job are:

1. Work-Life Balance. This is important since I’ll be managing my personal development work alongside with y day-job.
2. Development opportunities. To grow and help others grow is my core purpose and passion, and if I’m going to face something at least 8 hours every day, it needs to have development opportunities both for me as on a personal level and towards other people. Thus, I’ll need to have work that is dynamic in nature and lets me interact/work with a wide span of people.
3. Affinity with the industry and work. The nature of the industry and work need to be something I have an interest in.

I didn’t list remuneration/benefits as a priority, since the very act of getting a day job already addresses that.

In the past couple of weeks, there were two extremely good opportunities that came along the way which looked amazing by themselves. However, when evaluated against my objective/top 3 priorities, they did not pass the test. Thus, I made the decision to pass them up. While others may feel that it is a pity, their feelings are a result of looking at the options from their own life/goal objectives. It is important to always keep yourself open to the opinions and feedback from other people, while at the same time remembering that your evaluation should be done against your own objectives.

Update on 10 Mar ’09: I’ve decided to pursue my personal development work full-time and not return to a corporate day job For more details, read the post Embracing My Passion.

Are You Clear On Your End Objective?

Ask yourself these questions: What is your objective in life? What is the objective behind the goals you pursue? What is the objective behind the tasks you do everyday?

Whatever you do, always bear in mind your end objective. Every time you begin a task, be clear on what the end objective is. Every time you are working on something, evaluate it against your objective. Only by unwavering focus with the end in your mind will you achieve it.

Related Posts

• Increase Your Mental Clarity in Just 15 Minutes
• Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform This Year?
• 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals
• Goal Achievement: Establish

• Part 1: Goal Achievement: Introduction
• Part 2: ESPER
• Part 3: Establish
• Part 4: Strategy
• Part 5: Planning
• Part 6: Execution
• Part 7: Review

(If you do not have the habit of setting goals, please read this article first: 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals.)

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Establish is the 1st step of ESPER.

In Establish, you establish the goal that you are going to be pursuing. Since you are reading this goal achievement series, you probably already have a goal in mind which you want to achieve.

Yet, establishing your goal is more than just identifying a goal target you want to achieve. There are numerous list of factors of consideration to ensure that your vision is robust, accurate, and most importantly, what you really want.

Unfortunately, instead of investing quality time on this step, many people run into the mistake of being hasty. They skip past proper goal setting and jump straight into the planning and execution. At the end of the day, they end up causing a lot of backtracking and rework because they did not set the goal properly in the first place. Some of them actually achieve their goal, then find out that they did not want the goal in the first place.

Your time and energy are extremely precious, so it is better to invest a small portion of time to set the right goals. You do not want to waste your efforts on poorly set goals and end up crying over spilled milk after finding out you have spent your energy in vain. You do not want to be wasting time on goals which you never really wanted to begin with.

Establish consists of 2 parts. The first part is to setting your goal based on a set of 10 key, fundamental principles. The second part is what to do with your goals after establishing them. Let us explore each in turn.

Setting Your Goal

As you set your goal, you need to ensure that they adhere to the 10 key principles below. These are what will guide you to set the right goals so that you can pursue them.

1. Ensure Congruency with Your Life Purpose.

Your goals need to be defined in the context of your life purpose. Everything in your life flows from your purpose. Your purpose is the guiding direction for everything in your life. It sets the stage for what you do every day.

For example, part of my purpose is “To achieve my highest potential and embrace my best life; To live consciously and freely in truth, love and power“, while my goal for the mental aspect of myself is to “To unlock and utilize the full capabilities of my mind“. My goal is a subset of my purpose to achieve my highest potential. Both are congruent with each other.

Some people may ask – So where do ad-hoc goals like losing weight fit in this bigger picture? For me, losing weight is about looking my personal best and achieving the peak of my health. As such, it fits with my purpose to be my highest potential as well.

If your goals and your purpose are not congruent with one another, it either means
a) Your goals are not in-line with what you really want to do. If so, relook into them to understand your underlying motivations for listing them
b) You have limited the definition of your purpose. If this is the case, try to expand on the definition of your purpose.

Do you know what your purpose is? If you have not discovered your life purpose yet, I highly recommend you read the Discover Your Purpose series (7-part) before proceeding with this, as your purpose sets the right context and background for your goal setting. By identifying your purpose, you then have absolute clarity on your direction and focus in life. The last thing you want to do is to spend your whole life trying to grow oranges when you actually wanted apples.

2. Ensure Your Goal Is A Key Goal, or 80/20 Destination.

How much does this goal matter to you? Is this goal a key goal in your life – in other words, a 80/20 Destination? Your 80/20 destination refers to the 20% goals which when achieved, will give you 80% of the collective happiness from achieving all your goals. What are these 20% goals which really matter to you? These are what you should start focusing disproportionately on.

Note that the 80/20 figure is just a metaphor to describe a small handful of your goals brings you that disproportionate amount of happiness, so do not get hung up over the numbers. You may very well have 90/10 goals (i.e. 10% of goals which give you 90% of your happiness), 70/20 goals, and so on.

3. Understand Your Motivations.

Have you ever had an experience where you pursued a goal in full throttle, only to find out you never really wanted it? This brings to mind our society’s mad pursuit towards wealth and success; the endless paper chase to validate one’s worth; the corporate rat’s sprint up the managerial ladder.

There are some common symptoms which emerge when you do not actually want a particular goal: such as self-sabotaging yourself in your goal pursuit, losing interest during the goal achievement process, feeling hollow after the goal has been achieved. Has this ever happened to you in your goal pursuit?

As you set your goal, be clear on your underlying motivations. Your goal should be something that you really want, and not what others want you to do. Why do you want this goal? Is it for yourself or for others? What will you achieve out of conquering this goal? Being clear on your underlying desires will drive you forward in the times when you face obstacles.

If you find yourself setting a goal which is not what you really want but what others want you to do, it is a sign that you are chasing imposed purposes – purposes imposed upon you by other people around you. They are the opposite of liberating purposes – purposes which are active creations by you and your consciousness. If you are having end goals like earning money and being successful, there is a high likelihood that you are pursuing imposed purposes.

4. Identify Your Objective Goal First, then Activity Goals.

What are objective and activity goals? Objective goals are your vision behind activity goals. Activity goals are specific end outcomes which you are more familiar with, such as lose 10lbs or earn $10,000.

Examples of objective vs activity goals are: Be healthy vs lose 20 lbs. Foster strong relationships vs Spend more time with family. Have an enriching, fulfilling career vs get a job as a financial trader. Living in abundance vs increasing income by $500.

Objective goals are the visions you want to pursue forever in your life rather than end destinations. Activity goals are means to achieve that visions. Objective goals usually remain the same throughout your life. Activity goals change over time.

Always define your objective goal first, followed by the activity goals needed to achieve the objective goals.

By clearly articulating your objective goal first, you can instead be guided by a whole host of activity goals tied to your objectives. You develop new insights and open yourself up to many other routes towards achieving your objective goal.

For example, say you looked yourself in the mirror and decided you want to lose 30lbs. What is the objective behind this? Usually people lose weight to become more attractive, so let us assume this is the objective. In this case, losing 30lbs is an activity goal which you think will make you look more attractive.

However, that is just one of the many ways you can achieve your objective to be more attractive. If you start brainstorming against that objective, you will start coming up with ideas such as ‘losing weight’, ‘buying more attractive clothes’, ‘improving your image’, ‘joining etiquette classes’, ‘improving your complexion’. This is a stark contrast vs how you initially limited yourself to just ‘losing weight’.

Clearly differentiating between your objective and activity goals enables you to see the bigger picture. You stop getting hung up on the outcome of activity goals and instead focus on achieving your actual objective goal. A lot of people obsess over their activity goal and hinge their life on it They may become upset or demotivated when they fail to live up to their activity goal. However, they do not realize their activity goal is merely one of the many methods they can use to reach their objective.

5. Plan for BHAGs.

A BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is a goal that is so visionary and ambitious that you have people going ‘wow’ and telling you that you are nuts when you share it with them. BHAGs are great for personal growth and goal pursuits because they require you to take on an entirely different set of thinking and strategy rather than a normal goal. They stretch you to levels you were previously not aware of.

People typically factor in many considerations as they are setting their goals and end up with half-baked goals in the name of realism and practicality. Do not do that. These considerations are all just ‘noise’ and they are irrelevant at the goal setting stage. Focus purely on what you want, and not how to do it. The ‘How’ part will come in the later steps of ESPER.

Your BHAGs should be big, challenging and motivating to you all at the same time. Setting small goals which don’t inspire or setting goals which are too big and discourage you defeat the purpose.

6. Be Specific.

Be very specific on what you want. The more specific you are, the better guided you are in your goal pursuit. Some guiding questions you can use include: What do you want to accomplish at the end point? What are the exact end output you are expecting? What is the time frame you are setting?

Ambiguous goal leads to ambiguous results. Imagine trying to shoot at a dartboard that is not clearly demarcated. How can you aim when you do not even know what the target is? When your end point clearly marked out, you have a clear target to home in on.

7. Make Them Measurable.

This principle applies specifically for Activity Goals, rather than Objective Goals since the latter are meant to be continuous directions to pursue (see principle #4 above).

For your (activity) goals to be effective, they need to be measurable. They should come with (1) a deadline and (2) a value you can measure against. These will be your success criteria when you evaluate against your performance. For example, if you have a goal to meditate, it may be to ‘Cultivate habit to meditate 30 minutes every morning by XX date′. If you have a goal to lose weight, it may be to ‘Lose 20lbs by XX date′.

For tasks which are qualitative, find a way to assess it. Let us say your goal is to be more confident. One way is to make it measurable is to set a target for how many times you broke out of your comfort zone in the day and spoke up. Or maybe your goal is to be more disciplined. You can attach it to an activity you want to achieve – such as waking up at 6am – and measure your success rate of performing that task.

8. Start with Long-Term, then Break Down into Short-Term.

Always start off with your long-term goal so you can get the full picture. From there, break it down into smaller segments. Two common criteria to break down are (a) time (b) magnitude. If your goal is to lose 40lbs in 1 year, your shorter term goals may be to lose 20lbs in 6 months and 10lbs in 3 months.

9. Set them as End Outcomes, not Tasks.

This refers to the end outcome that you want to see, not the task that is needed to get the result you want. Examples of Outcome vs Process are: ‘Achieving #1 in the competition’ vs ‘Attending 15 practices’, or ‘Securing $100,000 worth of sales’ vs ‘Securing meetings with 10 clients’.

By focusing on the end outcome, it builds the fastest track to goal achievement as actions that need to be undertaken will naturally fall into the picture. Some self-help educators recommend focusing on tasks vs results as results may be influenced by externalities which we cannot control. Personally, I think focusing with the end in mind is much more effective because you learn to anticipate and plan for contingencies for successful goal achievement, rather than attribute things to external factors. Instead of placing your locus of control externally, you put it internally within yourself.

10. Use Positive Framing.

Your goals are what you set yourself to achieve, so you want to be sure that you are attracting all the positive energy in the universe instead of negative. If your goal is framed negatively, it affects you on a subconscious level and sets you up for failure. Instead of ‘Prevent sickness and ill health’, try ‘A life of good health and longevity’. Instead of ‘Eliminate poverty’, try ‘Create unlimited abundance’. You do not want to waste any bit of your energy on any form of non-positive energy.

If you know about the Law of Attraction, this is essentially what this principle is about. Law of Attraction is about how thinking positive thoughts attract positive things into your life. If you do not believe in the LoA, it is okay – just know that your thoughts naturally guide your behavior and you want positive thoughts to be what is guiding your actions, not negative ones.

What To Do With Your Goals After Setting Them

After you have set your goals in accordance with those 10 principles, you are almost ready to move on to the 2nd step of ESPER. However, before that, there are 4 steps pertaining to your goals you need to adhere first.

1. Write Them Down

Write down your final objective and activity goals. This should be listed prominently in a place you will always be referring to.

2. Develop Absolute Mental Clarity of Your Goal

As you pursue your goal, you need to develop such a clear mental impression of your goal that you are able to perceive it with all your 5 senses, as if you have already achieved the goal. In fact, make it a point to do this every day in the morning, before you start your day. The clearer the image in your mind, the easier it is for you to manifest it in reality. Every goal is always created twice, first in the mind and then in reality. If you are unclear on how your goal looks like in your mind, how can you expect the physical manifestation to be what you really want?

For example, if your goal is to be the owner of your own restaurant serving Italian cuisine, imagine you are already in the situation. Close your eyes now and visualize the picture. How do you feel? Excited? Exuberant? What do you see yourself doing as the restaurant owner? How does your restaurant look? How big is your staff? What are you thinking now? What plans do you have for the restaurant moving forward? Capture that moment in your head and never lose sight of it. This level of mental clarity needs to be present and right in your mind throughout your goal achievement process.

3. Be in Constant Reminder of them

Set up your goal in places where you will be in constant reminder of it. Reminding yourself of your goal is extremely important to keep them in your top of mind awareness. It creates the drive and energy to pursue it every day. There are many ways to do that, such as setting it as your wallpaper, putting it on your noticeboard, putting up a poster of it, creating a vision board, having it as your handphone welcome message, putting it as the cover of your notebook, making a habit to review your goals every morning, and so on. For me, I always make it a point to review my goal sheet every morning after I wake up. It sets me on the activities to take on for the day and keeps me conscious of what is important and what is not important in achieving my dreams.

4. Review Periodically

Review your objective and activity goals regularly. You should review your activity goals more often (e.g., once every month), while your objective goals can be reviewed between longer intervals (e.g., once a quarter) since they are less subjected to changes.

It is important to review goals since they can become irrelevant over time. For example, when I was younger, earning a lot of money was very important to me. Over time, this goal lost its importance when my life purpose changed. Now, it is now most important for me to help other people achieve their highest potential. Money is still important, but as a means to achieve what I want, and not an end.

In the next part of the series, we will be looking at the 2nd step of ESPER – Strategy.

This is part 3 of a 7-part series on what it takes to successfully achieve goals.

• Part 1: Goal Achievement: Introduction
• Part 2: ESPER
• Part 3: Establish
• Part 4: Strategy
• Part 5: Planning
• Part 6: Execution
• Part 7: Review

Related Posts

• Goal Achievement: Strategy
• Goal Achievement: Planning
• Goal Achievement: Execution
• Goal Achievement: Review

“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” – Bill Copeland

“You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal.” – Zig Ziglar (More quotes on goal setting)

Do you set goals for yourself? What are your goals for the next 12 months? How about 3 years from now? 5 years? 10 years? What are your aspirations that you look towards coming true?

Goal setting is the first step towards successful goal achievement. It marks your first point towards success. It is what put your life into real action mode. Without this step, the other steps of goal achievement cannot take place.

Have you ever encountered people who have a passive approach towards life? They don’t set any goals and they just live life on a meandering, day-to-day basis. You see them 1 year, 3 years, 5 years from now, and their lives are largely the same, save for a few changes that are really more the result of others’ actions and desires rather than their own.

Below are 6 key reasons why setting goals is so important:

1. Gives Clarity On Your End Vision

As the opening quote by Bill Copeland put it across very adeptly, if you don’t have a goal in life, you are spending your life running around and not achieving anything for yourself. You get the illusion that you are doing a lot of things, but they aren’t what you want. You are just busy fulfilling everyone’s goals. It can be the fast food industry enjoying your patronage because you’re lovin’ it, multi-billion dollar consumer goods companies securing your purchase because they convinced you that their haircare products with 76% frizz reduction is something you need, fashion houses getting you to buy their clothes because it makes you look cool, or you working in a job you don’t love because it is safe, secure and rakes in the dough.

How are you supposed to manifest what you want if you don’t even set concrete goals? How do you supposed to achieve your dreams and visions if you don’t clearly spell out the end output you desire?

Setting your goals gives you clarity on what you ultimately want. It makes you crystallize and articulate the desires floating in your mind. It ensures that you are channeling your time, energy and efforts into things that really matter to you. It makes you live more consciously.

Everything in this world is created twice: First – creation in your mind, followed by the manifestation in reality. Without the mental creation, there will be no physical creation. When you set a goal, you already accomplish the first creation. You have set into motion a decree for yourself and the forces of your universe to materialize the goal in the physical reality.

2. Drives You Forward

Your goals are a representation of your inner desires; desires which motivate you in life. The point when you set goals marks one the points when you are most connected with your source of motivation. It is when your motivation is at its peak. Having goals at your side serve as constant reminders of your motivational sources. They are the fuel which drive you forward and keep you going when the going gets tough.

If I ever experience moments where I lose motivation, I get into meditation mode and focus on some of my most important goals in life, including the goal to turn my personal development business into a full-time career. I will visualize the scenario with full mental clarity, as if it is happening in the now. When I do that, it’s like a clear connection is formed with my inner desires. The motivational energy suddenly surges through very readily and I channel this energy into my daily life and actions.

3. Gives You Laser Focus

Goals give you a single focal point to place your attention in. Whereas your purpose gives you a broad, directional focus to move your life in, goals gives you laser focus on what exactly to spend your time and energy on. Think of your time, energy and efforts as input, and results as the output. A goal acts as your funnel which guides and channels those inputs effectively into your desired output.

When you don’t have goals, you are floating around every day. Your energy is randomly dispersed in ad-hoc activities which you engage on whimsical basis. These are activities that play no role in your larger scope of life, but you are not aware of because you are just living life as it is. You end up mislabeling a lot of ‘nice-to-do’ activities as important. You might also be engaging in these ‘nice-to-do’ activities because you can’t think of a better way to spend your time. Do you find yourself surfing and chatting excessively? Busy running errands? Play a lot of games? Spend the bulk of your time being a workaholic? Spend the remaining time lazing and/or partying away? What’s your objective for doing them? What end output does it lead to? Is that the top priority in your life?

You may have a broad idea of what you want to do. But until you clearly articulate it out as specific goals, you are not channeling your efforts properly. You will often find yourself getting sidetracked because you don’t have goals to rein you in. It’s really quite easy to get swept away by the currents of everyday life, simply because there are so many stimulus out there in our environment. You may get the general overall impression that you are moving in the direction, but it is just an illusion that you are having. With no goals, you have no focus. Without this focus, your input is strewn around randomly to give you garbage output. That is, if you even get any semblance of an output at all.

4. Makes You Accountable

Having goals makes you accountable. Rather than just talking about what you want all the time and not do anything concrete about them, you are now obligated to take action. Setting a specific goal gives you clarity on whether you are living up against what you committed yourself to do when you first set your goal.

This accountability is accountability to yourself, not anyone else. This accountability is what you hold up to when you choose the healthy salad over that piece of fried chicken. It is what you answer to when you spent that hour working on your report rather than random web surfing. When you stay accountable towards your goals, you are in fact staying true to your desires (see point 1 above).

For my blog, one of the goals I set is the number of articles which I want to write every week. When I set such targets in place, I become accountable towards delivering against it. If I find myself falling short, I will take the necessary actions to turn the situation around. I examine how I have been spending my time and start prioritizing across my daily tasks. I cut out the Quadrant 4 tasks (time wasters) or activities that bear little to no relation to my goals. From this, I have reduced considerable time on my biggest time wasters, including chatting, random web surfing, constantly checking my mail/web stats, certain outings which are not as important compared to my writing goal.

5. Be The Best You Can Be

Goals help you achieve your highest potential. Without goals, you subject yourself to the natural, default set of actions that keep you feel safe and comfortable every day. But this familiarity is the nemesis of growth. It prevents you from growing. It does not enable you to become the best person you can be. It denies you from tapping into all that potential inside of you.

By setting goals, you set targets to strive against. These targets make you venture into new places, new contexts, new situations which puts you into growth mode. They make you stretch beyond your normal self and reach new heights. For example, setting a time limit for your run lets you know if you should be running faster. Setting a weight loss target makes you aware if your actions have been effective in losing weight. Setting a career goal ensures you are not settling for anything less than what you desire.

In my goal achievement processes, I have found myself constantly bursting through new grounds and uncovering potential which I did not know existed before. Without those goals, I would be taking the path of least resistance, just doing things within their natural constraints. Goals have made me face and overcome countless barriers to get to what’s on the other side. It has made me much more self aware and learn a lot more things about both myself and life, compared to if I did not have those goals.

6. Live Your Best Life

Goals ensure you get the best out of life, for two reasons.

Firstly, by becoming a better person, your new found knowledge and abilities let you experience more out of the same life events compared to the previous you. Think about how your worldview is different now vs the you 10 years ago. Do you see life with much more clarity, depth and perspective today than you were in the past? What may be a simple daily occurrence in the past holds a lot more meaning to the more highly evolved you today.

Secondly, time passes in our life, whether we want to or not. Goals with specific measures and deadlines ensure we are maximizing our output and experiences during our time here. If you have already discovered your life purpose, your goals will ensure you get the best out of your purpose.

Imagine you are driving a car. When you identify your purpose, you get clarity on the direction to travel in. However, without specifying an exact destination and time frame, there is no yardstick to benchmark your progress against. It wouldn’t make a difference whether you are whizzing at an amazing 140km/hour or a paltry 10km/hour since you never set a target. Goals ensure you are maximizing your life for all that it can offer you.

Start Setting Goals

Ask yourself this – What are my goals for the upcoming 1 year, 3 years, 5, 10 years?

If you are to take some time out to set your goals now, I can guarantee you that you will definitely experience more growth as a person. By just spending a few minutes to articulate some aspirations that have been in your mind, you will experience more progress in your life a year from now than compared to if you don’t.

Read the 7-part goal achievement series ESPER which shares what it takes to successfully achieve goals.

• Part 1: Goal Achievement: Introduction
• Part 2: ESPER
• Part 3: Establish
• Part 4: Strategy
• Part 5: Planning
• Part 6: Execution
• Part 7: Review

Related Posts

• Goal Achievement: Establish
• Keep Your End Objective In Mind
• Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform This Year?