I said to myself that I was not going to write a post on goals, as so many people write posts on goals and quite frankly there’s enough of them. However, after having seen a bunch of posts on both Linkedin and Facebook, and seeing how massively complicated people are making these things, I decided that I would write one. This is the simple way I’ve been doing it for the last 5 years. Hopefully, it might help you, as much as it helped me!

I’ve been on this planet now for 41 years and I know that I am not motivated by money. That is not what drives me to work hard as hell and put in the hours. I am motivated by achieving things, learning new things and personal growth. Money is a by-product of me achieving those things. It’s the money that allows me to do those things that I want to achieve, so I never set my goals as a number, as that’s not my driver or what makes me feel happy.

If I set something so massively specific, and I fail, then I’m a failure.  Hard for perfectionists like me, who are ultimately not really happy with anything they do and who have real trouble shipping something until everything is perfect. ( which of course it never is).

Now I only set one single goal for the year. That goal is my lens, the way I see the world for the year. It’s as if I were putting on spectacles, with the glass framing my view. In 2017 my goal was self-esteem. So every time I made a decision, had to decide on doing an activity or action or whether I should interact with people ( personal & work) I assessed them through the self-esteem lens. Did it empower me, or leave me empty and less than?

Did I succeed? Well yes, I did.  (Believe me, the fact that I can actually say that I am happy with something I have done, is a massive achievement in itself). I did a lot of things that I have been trying to do for a very long time. Have a photo-shoot, create a blog and write and publish ( without spending weeks procrastinating), and finally go Nomadic.

None of those things would I have achieved if I had not set my goal and lens for the year of Self Esteem. I also looked at both personal and work relationships and the way that I was treated ( or letting people treat me) and I also addressed those. Some of those were tough, really tough, as I had to create much stronger boundaries and on a few occasions stand up to some nasty bullies. However I knew I was doing it for something much bigger, so it was easier to stick to my guns, so to speak.

Am I over, practising self-esteem? Does this year’s goal, get to be closed off? This one has to stay with me for life I’m afraid, as I have realized that it’s probably the essence of everything and the bedrock, of what will help me create even more success. However I’m several steps forward in the right direction, and now I have a much better toolkit than I had before.

So on to 2018…. And this year it’s EXPERIMENTS

So what does that mean? That means that everything I do is an experiment, that means that I need to try out as many ideas, concepts, adventures as I possibly can and see if it sticks. Not sit around and procrastinate that I am going to look like a damn fool and wait until everything is perfect and 100%. That’s not 2018.

2018 is authentic, raw and some of it will look and feel like crap.

I don’t want to look back on 2018 and say,  I never published those pod-casts, because they don’t sound like they’ve been made in a million dollar studio, I never made those 360 videos, because I was too scared….and on it goes.

It’s that simple, it really is.

Now before you think, that my whole 2018 is going to be filled with me trying out new stuff and doing no real work, that’s not quite true. I have a system in place, that’s highly planned, and organized to the hour. I have work to do and sales to achieve and they get decided on or revised each week and added to my “school timetable”. However, I don’t look at them as goals. For me, they are “to do’s”.  As in I have to do them.

How I achieve them, is linked heavily to the goals and thus my mindset. If I as a salesperson and marketer stick to the same thing, that I have always done, then I don’t think my numbers will rise, but if I “experiment” who knows what I might find, that improves on everything?

Goals for me are now heavily linked to personal growth. Having been through a nasty depression and pulled myself out of it in 2016, it’s even clearer to me, that only when you have mastered yourself and your feelings(which seems never bloody ending from where I am sitting), can you get into achieving and really FEELING success. If you don’t feel good about yourself, then no matter what success you get, it does not resonate anyway, but that’s for another post.

Why am I not setting work goals you say? Everyone else does?

I work in consumer electronics and my industry changes day to day, minute by minute. Consumer trends, market trends, fashion trends, cultural trends, new devices, retailer success and fails, buyer comings and goings. I can’t plan for any of that, and so I watch all this going on and make my moves when the opportunity is right or ripe, not when my goals say it is. I am continually amending my plan each week, based on what I see in the market. So my to do’s are every changing, but my GOAL is static.

Could I do it better?

Of course, I can, and there are plenty of coaches and “mentors” sharking about trying to help me achieve this. I don’t deny that they could help me or you, but I think the most important thing I have learned is to put one foot in front of the other and just do it and stop procrastinating.

I have to remind myself of that every single day, and with the simple word EXPERIMENTS echoing in my head and hitting my subconscious, I know I’ll have some wins, some failures and hopefully some bloody good stories come 2019.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you plan, procrastinate, make lavish goals ? …. And do you achieve them?

P.s I really have no idea where I got this concept from, as it’s been a very long time since I’ve been doing it. It’s pretty popular in health and wellness circles. If you know where it came from I’d love to know.