Hel­lo, hel­lo!

Wel­come to the first part of this 4‑Week Blog Series!

For this to work for you, you must pos­sess two things: extreme ambi­tion, in a relaxed, con­fi­dent man­ner and a deep, strong desire to change things for the bet­ter.

I want you to have an extra­or­di­nary month. I want you to real­ly, tru­ly change your life for the bet­ter. I want April 2016 to be the best month of your life, to date! But I need your help.

You must do the think­ing and doing. I will over­load you with enthu­si­asm. I will sup­ply you with lots of ideas. I will moti­vate you; I will cheer you on, and be with you every step of the way (because I will be doing it as well) but you must do the doing. You must be the one who is will­ing to put in the work.

This series will run every Mon­day for a total of four times this month.  Are you ready? Fab­u­lous.

This week will focus on set­ting goals. Goal set­ting is not ground­break­ing or pro­found; actu­al­ly, none of what I’m about to show you is. It has exist­ed since the begin­ning of time, but only a hand­ful of peo­ple live this way. It’s like a big secret, that’s avail­able to all of us, but very few take advan­tage of it.

What I will do slight­ly dif­fer­ent is approach the art of set­ting goals in a non-lin­ear way. Life is a curvy, sexy jour­ney. It’s not straight or lin­ear. Lis­ten, this was hard for me to com­pre­hend as well. I’m a Capri­corn, for Pete’s sake! I’m a nat­ur­al ana­lyst and so black and white, cause and effect is how I used to see life. I’ve learned that there’s a lot of grey. I no longer wish to work 12 hours per day, 6 days per week. That’s just not very smart.  If this is your life, you are prob­a­bly doing some­thing wrong as well.

I want to live life to the fullest, and I want to make a lot of mon­ey, I also want to be extreme­ly hap­py and healthy. I want to do great things with as lit­tle ener­gy and resources as pos­si­ble.

For this to hap­pen, you need to think. You need to think before you do any­thing else. You need to think about your life. Think about what you want. Think about how you spend your day.  Think about what makes you hap­py.  Think about what you’re real­ly good at.  Think.  Think.  Think.

We are going to think before we act. You are going to think about the things you want and you’re going to then nar­row your thoughts, selec­tive­ly on the few activ­i­ties that will yield ter­rif­ic results in every sin­gle area of your life.

If you haven’t already heard this it may come as a shock to you. But most peo­ple do things incor­rect­ly. We focus on things we don’t want. We spend time with peo­ple we don’t real­ly like. We do work we aren’t pas­sion­ate about and we only scratch a frac­tion of our poten­tial. This is insane.

But this is all about to change for you and it starts with Week One.  Keep read­ing.

Step One

I want you to think about what you want to accom­plish this month. But before you do this, I want you to write a list of every­thing you want out of life; don’t be shy.  What are some activ­i­ties that if you got them done each day would make a big dif­fer­ence in your life?  Can you think of one skill you can devel­op that would have the great­est pos­i­tive impact on your career?

Use the lat­ter ques­tion to guide your career for the rest of your life.  Ask your­self what skills you can devel­op that will make the biggest dif­fer­ence in your pro­fes­sion and life in gen­er­al.  And as you devel­op these skills, imag­ine the kind of per­son you will become.  This is a sexy thought!

Step Two

I now want you to take this list and cre­ate two cat­e­gories: On the left, you will include your short-term list and on the right, you’ll add your long-term goals.

Your short-term or “micro” list should include those activ­i­ties that pro­duce imme­di­ate results.  Can you think of some or one?

Your Long-Term or “macro” goals are what will keep you suc­cess­ful over the long haul.

For exam­ple, let’s say you want to shed some pounds. Sum­mer is approach­ing and you’ve pur­chased, in advance, (we all do it) a short sum­mer dress two sizes too small.

Your short-term goals should include those activ­i­ties you can do right away that will start pro­duc­ing results. I would include mak­ing a smart (some­times dif­fi­cult) choice about your next meal.  This is some­thing you do not need to pre­pare for.  There’s no need to wait to start.  You don’t have to wait until you pur­chase some new sneak­ers, or for your new work­out DVD to arrive in the mail.  Mak­ing a healthy choice on your next meal is some­thing you can do now.

This stuff is sim­ple.  Do one thing right now.  If you have a habit of drink­ing soda, per­haps go an entire day with­out drink­ing the addic­tive legal stim­u­lant and mark that as a suc­cess.

Your long-term goals may include run­ning a marathon, sign­ing up for a nutri­tion class at your local com­mu­ni­ty col­lege or invest­ing in a per­son­al train­er or gym mem­ber­ship.

I know what you’re think­ing. You want to go big. You’re excit­ed about the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of what you will do with your fab­u­lous new bod, and so you are plan­ning to work­out for two sol­id hours every sin­gle day this week, and remove all bad carbs out of your diet for good.

That’s adorable.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this excite­ment will slith­er away like a snake in a gar­den once your goal “hon­ey­moon” is over and real­i­ty has set in (more on the ugly truth in the com­ing weeks).  Slow and steady wins the race.

Step Three

We are now going to pri­or­i­tize and rank your two lists.  Per­haps this will help you nar­row down your choic­es.

What one activ­i­ty, task or skill will yield the most suc­cess in your life and or career if you learned it and applied it every day?

It is believed that 20% pro­duces 80% of the good stuff.  But sad­ly, most of us spend 80% of our time on activ­i­ties, clients, and rela­tion­ships that give us only 20% val­ue.

Let me try and sim­pli­fy this.  If you’re a busi­ness own­er, you might want to know that 80% of your prof­its come from 20% of your cus­tomers and 20% of your earn­ings come from a com­bined 80% of your clients.  Know­ing this, would­n’t it be smart to focus your ener­gy on the 20% that yield the high­est return?

I for­got to men­tion, aside from need­ing extreme ambi­tion and a strong desire to do things dif­fer­ent­ly, you also have to be a bit of an odd­ball.  You have to be will­ing to look stu­pid (at times).  You have to be ready to think dif­fer­ent­ly. This actu­al­ly is ground­break­ing stuff.  This will revamp your entire life, but only if you let it!

So now that you have ranked your list and have picked one goal that will make all the dif­fer­ence, now my nin­jas, now we can get start­ed.

Don’t fret or fear hav­ing to choose out of so many good choic­es.  You can do this next month and the month after that and the month after that.  You can have as many goals as you’d like!  The key is to pri­or­i­tize those activ­i­ties that are the most impor­tant, break them into bite size chunks, and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete them before mov­ing on to any­thing else.

I want you to take it slow and I want you to focus on one skill, for now. Slow and steady wins the race. I want you to take these con­cepts and apply them for­ev­er, and ever, but you first have to make them a part of your life.  Take your time. This love affair is here to stay, so no need to rush and risk not doing it right.

Step Four

I want you to think about what makes you hap­py. Mon­ey, suc­cess, mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions, etcetera are impor­tant and can be sources of oppor­tu­ni­ty to shift to a bet­ter lifestyle, but make sure these mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions are sub­or­di­nate to hap­pi­ness.

The key to hap­pi­ness lies in how you feel about your­self. So I want you to think about what makes you hap­py.  I want you to start think­ing of you. This is your right, and it’s God-giv­en.

I want you to do one thing every sin­gle day this week towards your over­all goal.  I want you to track your dai­ly progress in your jour­nal and I want you to ask your­self the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

1.  What are three things you did well today?
2.  What is one thing you would like to improve tomor­row?
3.  What is one thing you can do dif­fer­ent­ly right now that can help make that improve­ment?

It is impor­tant to learn to eval­u­ate your progress in a pro­duc­tive way.  The small increments–the tiny choic­es you make all mat­ter and count as a suc­cess.  Once you answer these three ques­tions, I want you to then write down your goals for the fol­low­ing day.

“Peo­ple don’t plan to fail.  They fail to plan.”

Remem­ber to rank your tasks in order of impor­tance.  I’ve talked about this in a pre­vi­ous post.  If you haven’t read it, make sure you stop what you’re doing and famil­iar­ize your­self with why it’s impor­tant to com­plete your Top 3 dai­ly goals.

Okay, we are going to end right here for today.  Make sure you do as I instruct­ed and make sure you keep an opti­mistic, pos­i­tive atti­tude.  Don’t for­get to tune in next week for the sec­ond part of this series.

I wish you all the best this week, dar­lings!

Xoxo,

Irís