I don’t need goals!

If you are feeling like you're not making progress toward the things you want in life, it could be because you have not set clear goals for yourself - goals about where you want to get to in personal relationships, career, finance, health, education, basically all the key aspects of your life.

Putting it simply, if you do not have clear goals you are wandering aimlessly in the desert. If you happen to have stumbled on water and food it is pure luck. Depending on luck to get through life is not a good plan for success.

Speaking of success, you need to define what success means to you, not what other people tell you it is. Not everybody considers having gazillions of dollars success, nor does everybody view living alone in a hut at the top of mountain success. Some may, but that is their choice. 

Before you can set goals for the various aspects of your life you should first decide how you will measure success. For example, if having many friends and an active social life is what you want, that will significantly impact your goals and choices. Similarly, if having just one good friend is all you need, you will make very different choices and set different goals. 

How do you set a goal? What are the characteristics of a goal? 

A common approach to goal setting is using the S.M.A.R.T. approach. This stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. So when you construct a goal it should have all these characteristics. For example a health goal may be: I want to complete the Boston Marathon in under 4 hours in 2018. This is very specific, measurable, achievable (assuming you are in suitable health), and may be very relevant for your particular life goals.

You will most likely want to set multiple goals. However, do not try to set too many, because then you are mostly likely to achieve none. I believe you should keep between 3 and 5. 

Knowing your personal passion and what you are good at doing makes setting goals easier. If you do not have clarity on these, maybe that should be your first goal: to discover your passion and inherent skills and capability. Knowing your passion will help you set your core goals on what you want achieve in your career, and perhaps your financial goals as these two are often interconnected. Your career goal may be to become a fiction writer, but you may generate your current income being a marketing content creator. In this case you use your core capability to sustain your life until your career as a writer is established.

When you engage with a mentor, one of the first discussions will be “What are your goals?” and most importantly "Why?". I always ask my proteges why they have set the goals they have. Often they can’t answer, or have fuzzy thinking about why they have set the specific goals. Before I can address specifics to guide them, I first challenge them to answer why they have these goals. Frequently they realize they have the wrong goals. We can then work on finding their true goals, and the real work can start.

Rise above and achieve those goals!