Life on Purpose

Now you know what your goals are the next step is to ‘create’ or describe them in detail. How will they be achieved? Will they require resources and if so, do you have them? Will they require outside help? How ‘big’ are they measured in time and space? Do you need to acquire new knowledge and understanding? What are the potential obstacles?

This analysis in detail of each goal may throw up some ‘issues’ with the schedule you worked out in the previous step, and you may have to make some changes. In the next step you’ll look at creating the plans you need in place and the actions you need to take to complete those plans so there’s no need to go into them at this point.

You may have had some experience in business life of ‘goal setting’ exercises and so-called SMART Goals. Those are not the same type of goals as we’re considering here. ‘Smart’ goals, beloved of management and sales teams are always tailored to what they think they can do – they are really just ‘pumped up’ ‘A’ type goals which can be achieved with a little extra effort to make the team or organisation ‘feel good’.

Our goals though, do have some similar characteristics you should consider. As well as being as ‘specific’ as possible they should be flexible to cope with circumstances, events or processes going on as you progress them which you may not be aware of, especially if there is any dependency on third parties.

They don’t need to be ‘measurable’ other than that it should be clear and obvious when they have been achieved. You may want to measure progress in some way as you are working the plans you set up to achieve them.

Achievement of your goals is fundamental to realising your vision and purpose so there’s no question as to whether they are ‘achievable’ or not – you are going to do this – whatever it takes, and you will find a way!

As far as targets are concerned these again can be flexible as long as they fit within the target frame for achieving your dream and be of a ‘size’ which is appropriate. Details of accurate targets will come out of the planning stage which is the next step.