Where do you want to be, personally and professionally, by the end of this year? What about in five or ten years? Or perhaps by the time of your next milestone birthday?
The sad reality is that while we are born with the ability to achieve greatness, many people live with the aching feeling that they are underachieving in life and the knowledge that they could be doing much better than they are.
American politician Benjamin Franklin once quipped that “in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” while none of us can accurately predict the length of our lives, we can influence the breadth and depth of it.
You and you alone control the substance and quality of the thoughts and actions you put into each day, week, month, and year.
Set yourself up for success; avoid these three common pitfalls when setting your 2025 goals.
Over time, the pressures of life, the challenges we face to fit in, and the way our immediate needs have a habit of consuming our most whimsical desires have all conspired to limit our expectations, so we tend to think in terms of more tactical short-term goals.
However, that type of thinking can prevent us from thinking big, which goes against the whole point of setting aspirational goals.
You may have to dig deep to escape some of the shackles of modern adult thinking. You’ll have to go back in time and reignite the childlike instinct, the sense of curiosity and of possibility that you had as a child when you believed you could achieve anything. When asked what you wanted to be growing up, you had endless possibilities and no sense of limitation.
The idea behind reconnecting with your childlike instincts is that it will enable you to get closer to your original WHY—the reason you want to achieve something, the things that will drive you towards your goal.
At 16, I dropped out of school and went into construction. I remember the first project I worked on: a brand-new hospital in the Northwest city of Liverpool. On the day that we ‘cut the turf’ as the ceremony was known, I stood in a green field with the architect, the structural engineer and the client. I held an artist’s impression of what the hospital would look like two and a half years into the future when it was finished.
All construction projects are created that way, with a diagram, a plan, a blueprint, and a drawing of the finished building. Every day after that, a plan is executed step-by-step to create the reality depicted in the picture in exact detail. And that’s precisely what happened with that hospital.
We were not thinking of what it could look like when it was done; we were thinking of what it already looked like and then working backwards to ensure the future became a reality.
This guiding principle applies whether your goal is personal or professional, long or short, technical or simple.
Let’s make this real. Pick a goal and determine a realistic timeline for achieving it, whether six months, 12 months, three years, five years, or ten years. Build a clear picture in your mind of what achieving that goal will look, feel, sound, and taste like. Transport yourself to that end time and reflect on what you have achieved.
By imagining the end goal in crystal precise detail, you can work your way backwards and set up the steps needed to create the future you want.
Now, of course, you and I are realists. We know that life isn’t a straight line. There will be deviations, buffeting winds, and so on because that’s just reality. But isn’t it great to realize that we can do some practical things, aligned with positive, realistic thinking, to make life more like a set of railway tracks?
Though there will still be deviations, having a crystal-clear vision of our starting point in the future can limit the wrong turns, misfires, and do-overs that are inevitable otherwise.
Let me give you some context. If you write your goals in the future tense, where do they stay? That’s right; they will remain in the future. However, we don’t want them to be there because that falls into pitfall #2.
If you’re thinking of your goals, then yes, you would write goals in the future tense. But when you’re thinking FROM your goals, you must write them in the present tense as if you’ve already obtained them. You must do this because of the enormous psychological power involved.
How you say them, think about them, and, yes, write them is designed to get your subconscious mind used to the idea that they’re already in place so that it works with your conscious mind to drive actions that will ultimately make them a reality.
If you are an avid goal setter and have already written your goals down in black and white, please use this blog to refresh your thinking, perhaps by presenting a few additional ideas from a different perspective or by reinforcing the strength of the steps you’ve already taken.
The ideas here are probably the most important if you haven’t previously set goals. The overwhelming number of real success stories in life have been achieved by people who have been diligent and thoughtful about setting goals and following and measuring the steps they take toward their achievement.
