Destinations: A Guide To Effective Goal Setting
By S.L. Mackey
Copyright Sheri L. Mackey 2012
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Personal Goal Setting
Chapter 2 Preparing For Your Journey
Chapter 3 Planning Your Route
Chapter 4 Confirming Your Course
Chapter 5 Milestones
Chapter 6 Set Your Coordinates For Success
Chapter 7 Take The Most Efficient Route
Chapter 8 The Travel Log
Chapter 9 Preventing A Wrong Turn – The Seven Deadly Sins of Goal Setting
Chapter 10 You Have Arrived
Chapter 1: Personal Goal Setting
All successful people, men and women, are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
- Brian Tracy
Personal goal setting is the single most important thing you can do to ensure you reach your potential – as a leader and as a person. You need well-defined targets that give you direction and motivation – they are your road map to success (that is, what you consider to be success) - your life’s plan, your personal guide to the future. Think about it, without setting both personal and professional goals you are going down a road with no destination.
If you're one of the 95% of people on this planet who don’t know what their personal goals are (or life’s ambition is) - and as a result still have no idea where your final destination should be - then you should consider creating explicit goals that will drive you to achieve everything you want in life. Goal setting is just a process, but it is a very important and personal process that helps you get what you really want out of life. Too many of us dream about where we want to go, but we don’t have a map to guide us as to how to get there in an effective, efficient way.
Throughout history, there is a clear link between people that set goals and people that succeed. People who set goals have a clear path towards their chosen destination - people who succeed have goals and people who have goals succeed. Personal goals significantly increase your chances of life happening the way you want it to happen.
In reality, would you set out for an unknown destination with no real idea of how to get there? Probably not! Despite this fact, statistics show that while most leaders have substantial goals in place for their organizations, very few actually have goals in place for their lives.
By establishing personal and professional goals, you will:
Work out what you really want from life – leading you into the future. This is a personal process. You’re the only one who knows what you really want, and it’s often not what you think and not what others may expect from you.
Create a roadmap to help you achieve what you really want – there is no point having a great destination if you don’t know how to get there.
Access the motivation to work toward what you really want from life – because you will be able to work out and explicitly see your aspirations, you will be motivated to push toward your ambitions.
Obtain a tool to guard against losing your direction - It’s easy to get distracted by life’s challenges. Personal goals will help you focus your time and energy in the right direction, especially when you are being pulled in many different ways.
Acquire a mechanism to produce a tangible outcome that will allow you to achieve your dreams and create a legacy.
Over the course of this book, we will discuss personal goal setting and how to make these goals work for you in achieving your short, medium, and long term aspirations for your life.
How will you achieve your potential?
Chapter 2: Preparing For Your Journey
Goals are dreams with deadlines.
~ Diana Sharf Hunt
What is the difference between a dream and a goal? A dream is fanciful and vague, while a goal is concrete and measurable. Despite the differences, if you do not properly prepare for personal goal setting, your goals can easily become just faded dreams.
In order to succeed in establishing a purpose and direction for our lives, we need to do more then simply have vague ideas in our head or scribble down some random ideas on a piece of paper. Goals need to be complete and focused, much like a dedicated route on a map. In planning for your journey in personal goal setting, there are some important preparations that need to be made in order to help you accurately follow the route, recognize milestones and ultimately, reach the final destination you most sincerely desire.