Select One Goal
Once you’ve taken the time to determine what you would like to accomplish in the major areas of your life, the next task is to select one goal from that list to start on.
Once you’ve identified the single goal which will have the greatest impact on your life, or that you’re just most interested in achieving, you are ready to move on to the task of clarifying that goal in great detail.
It’s important to limit yourself to just one goal, and sometimes that’s difficult. As we start to take the proper view of our life for this exercise, it brings several things we might like to change into our awareness.
It can be very tempting to think you can tackle two at a time …. wrong, wrong, wrong! I can’t encourage you strongly enough to resist that temptation. There’s plenty of time to get to goals #2, #3 and#4. But diverting your attention is a dangerous proposition that can lead to failing to get reach any goal.
Identifying and reaching any goal without getting distracted is tough enough. Don’t set yourself up for failure by trying for more than one.
Exactly which goal you select is up to you. One line of thinking says to select the goal that will have the greatest long term benefit – that’s where you’re greatest payoff is. Some people recommend selecting one of the simpler goals first, to get your momentum going and allow yourself to experience an early success to help motivate you. My suggestion would be this:
- Think long term.
We know that people who hold a long term perspective tend to outperform others who plan and think day to day, so that leads me to believe that chipping away at those things that will have the greatest benefit over the course of your life are the most important goals, and therefore the ones you should work on first.
Either way, the simple fact that you’ve started and are working on a “new you” is the big win. Everything after that is nuance.
