We are “serial goal setters”! Goals have been a constant in our lives, helping us chart our paths and measure our progress. Perhaps it's our desire to stay in control or to anticipate what's coming over the next horizon that drives us. What we do know is that too many salespeople allow others to steer their course. They accept yearly quotas as their sole targets for the New Year, without considering how adding personal “quality of life goals” might amplify their results.
As the year ends, we often hear about setting goals for the coming New Year. The excitement of a fresh start drives many to dream of better performance and new beginnings. Sadly, most people only talk about goals without taking action, content to daydream about what could be.
Goals without plans and daily action are simply well-meaning fantasies. For the past 17 years, we’ve been captivated by the idea of climbing Mt. Everest. We've read countless books on the topic and even mentally mapped out how we’d accomplish it, yet we haven’t taken a single step toward making it a reality. The dream lives on, but without action, it remains just a dream.
Each of us travels along a lifeline from birth to our final destination. Along the way, we make countless choices, but one overarching decision usually defines our life. Are we living by default (letting others make choices for us) or by design (making deliberate choices ourselves)?
Here’s a question that will be the central theme of this article: “Are you a goal setter or a problem solver?” Most of us will naturally fall on one side, with top performers usually identifying as goal setters. Interestingly, only two percent of people are true goal setters, while the other ninety-eight percent rely on problem-solving to navigate life. Problem solvers might claim they’re moving forward just as fast as goal setters, but they tend to progress in the direction of the problems they tackle, rather than in the direction their life could ideally take.
Here's an exercise we always perform at this time of year. Take eight pieces of blank paper and title each with one of the following categories: Social, Physical, Spiritual, Financial, Educational, Work, Family, and Personal. Under each heading, list what you want to accomplish for the coming year. As you prioritize each list, ask yourself these questions:
- What behaviors must we change to achieve each goal?
- How committed are we to each item?
- What will achieving each goal do for us personally?
- What obstacles will we need to overcome?
- Who will serve as our accountability partner?
- How will we celebrate each achievement?
There are over 52,000 books on goal setting on Amazon, so if you need more specifics on the process, any one of them can help. Experience has taught us, though, that it’s less about the “how” and more about the “whether.”
We hope that the goal setters among us will be motivated to set more ambitious goals and achieve even greater success. For everyone else, we encourage setting small, manageable goals as a starting point. Choose something that will push you beyond your current comfort zone and commit to working on it for the next twenty days. Pay special attention around the fourteen-day mark, as this is when challenges arise, and self-doubt may try to convince you to quit. If you can push through this, you'll be one step closer to controlling your future. Then, it’s just a matter of repeating the process: “Set goals, achieve dreams, set more goals.
