After I finished writing “Goals Part 3: WHAT, I realized I haven’t shared enough with you on how to execute on turning your dreams into reality. So, I’m going to keep drilling down on Goals – including the 3 Ps of Goals – until you have enough tools that you can’t make any excuses not to try!
“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso
The theme of this post is about categorizing and defining your goals. Remember, you’re already ahead by thinking about goals in the first place. So few people spend the time to think about what they want, they go through life reacting from one task to the next, and then when their body is spent and their hour-glass of life is dripping the last few granules of sand, they say: “I woulda-shoula-coulda”. The objective of goal planning and “ goal-doing” is to remove “woulda-shoulda-coulda’s” from your vocabulary. Sure, we won’t be able to do it all, you’ll have to make comprises over your lifetime, but you can get damn close if you focus on your future and the outcomes you want.
From here on out, NO MORE Woulda-Shoulda-Coulda’s!
Step One: Categorizing Your Goals
I call it the 3 “P”s of Goal Planning. They are super simple: Professional, Personal and Physical. Here’s how I define them:
Professional
Professional: from financial to promotions to accolades to whatever you’re trying to achieve in your career, goes in here.
Personal
Personal: family, friends and you . Want to write a book? Move your family overseas? Surprise your parents with an anniversary gift? Throw an Epic bash for friends? This is that goal bucket.
Physical
Physical: this bucket has a double meaning. It’s not just a physical, as in fitness goal for you and your body, but also for your physical wants, as in hard goods, like a car, house, plane, submarine, jet pack or whatever you’re dreaming about.
The point is, remember, if you don’t make your body a priority throughout your life, you’ll lose the ability to experience other things as you get older and those Woulda-Shoulda-Couldas will creep back into your life as you tell your kids or grandkids, “Sorry, I’m too old or out of shape to go zip-lining with you in Costa Rica or surfing with you in Hawaii or whatever…..” Age is a state of mind IF you take care of your body!
Step Two: Dreaming Up Your Goals
Now that you know the categories, spend some time dreaming up what you want to get done in your life. I realize that’s a big topic and thinking about 20 year goals first can be daunting. As I mentioned in my last post, I didn’t make my first 20 year goals until I was married at the age of 28. If 20 years away seems like an eternity, then forget about that time line – just write down EVERY THING YOU WANT IN THOSE THREE BUCKETS…and I mean EVERYTHING!
I want you to find a quiet place, put your electronic devices away, close the blinds, put a single light on over a blank sheet a paper (remove ALL distractions), start a timer (try 10 minutes, if’s too short then go to 20 minutes) and dream with reckless abandon. Make bullet points like this:
3 Ps of Goals – Professional
- Make $XXXXXXX a year
- Build a company that helps people take control of their bodies and their lives
- Invent products that make a difference in people’s lives
- Give 50 speeches a year
- Make a movie
- Be an Ambassador
- Create a consumable product company
- Positively impact 100 million people
3 Ps of Goals – Personal
- Take my family on a trip a quarter
- Live overseas
- Learn to kite surf
- Write a children’s book
- Go back to school every decade of my life
- Learn another language
3 Ps of Goals – Physical
- Hike the seven summits
- Ski to the North and South Poles
- Own a BIG sailboat that can hold all my family
- Sail around the world with my family
- Own a vintage car
The list is your list, and this is just a smattering of things on my list, but write it ALL down – EVERYTHING.
DREAM as if no one is judging you!
Having a hard time writing for 10 minutes on stuff you want to do? Think about the magazines that you like to read, what are the people doing in them? What would you do if your success was guaranteed? Ask yourself “What if” questions like “what if” I wasn’t scared of heights , or “what if” I had a business that I could do anywhere in the world , “what if” I could help the people that matter most to me? Love to travel ? GREAT! There are 190 countries out there to explore, write down the ones you want to go to the most. Point is, your brain needs a little prompting. We spend so much time dealing with reactions at work and at home, that when you ask your brain to be pro-active, it can take a little while to switch gears. Don’t worry, it’s normal , but switch gears you MUST!
Now, when your list is complete, put it away for 24 hours.
Step Three: Define Your Goals
This step has a couple of steps inside of it.
- Go through your list and circle the goals that are the MUST-HAVE goals in your life. The ones that are absolutely positively the important ones to you right now! These are non-negotiable goals for you. For example, I want to sail around the world and I would love to do it with my family and their families. I have this vision of grand-pa teaching his grandkids how to sail the open seas and take them SCUBA diving in the French Polynesian Islands. I’ll make that happen, but not now, I have more pressing goals, like giving 50 speeches a year. Pick those pressing goals for you, the ones that are your difference makers.
- Take a second sheet of paper and write those goals down that you’ve circled. Keep them in your same three buckets of Professional, Personal and Physical (or pick your buckets, doesn’t really matter what you call your categories so long as your brain can relate to them.)
- Assign a time period to each one of those goals. This gets a little challenging for most because this is where horizons come into play. You know what you know so you tend to think “too” realistically. You plan conventionally to the horizon you’re familiar with. I want you to push your realm of reasonable to what you feel is extreme on achieving these goals.
Place this list on your desk and let it sit for another 24 hours. (Just to confirm, you’re now two days in – you wrote down, with reckless abandon, everything you want on day one and then on day two, you circled and assigned time lines to your “must-have , non-negotiable” goals.
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My next blog post will be what you do on Day 3 and beyond.
Fire Up your DREAM engines and WRITE THEM DOWN – ALL OF THEM!
Onward and UPWARD,
Alden
Tag: 3 Ps of Goals – Professional, Personal and Physical
