My main challenge has been that I have so MANY goals that I want to accomplish that I get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things I need to get done and I work on a little bit of this and a little bit of that but I don’t really feel like I’m moving any one of them forward with absolute momentum and certainty.

Zoraida and I call our HUGE goals that feel overwhelming “elephants” because of that old saying that goes, “How do you eat an elephant?” And the answer is, “One bite at a time.”

Well, I was telling Zoraida that it felt like I was taking a nibble out of the elephant’s tail and a bite out of its ear and a lick off of its body.  Hellz, my elephant had no worries that I was going to eat him.

Until now.  (Watch out elephant!!)

I won’t go into detail of what my system is right now because I’m still refining it, but here are a couple of takeaways that I’ve learned in regards to Goal Management.

All of the systems that I’m frankensteining together have a lot of common concepts.  Two concepts (among the many) that I found to be absolutely critical are the following:

1.  Know WHAT you WANT.  Be specific. You need to have a super clear vision of what it is you want and you need to know specifically what needs to be occurring when you have what you want.

A great question I’m practicing asking myself every time I state what I want is:  “What am I doing when I have that?” (Example:  I want Financial Freedom.  “What am I doing when I have that?” I’m lying on a white sand beach on a tropical island.  The sun is just setting, the air is warm, but not muggy.  My Dude and I are drinking cocktails enjoying the sun set.)

Notice that I can get even more specific with that image.  I could identify WHAT tropical island and WHICH sand beach.  The important part, however, is to simply begin imagining what it really, really looks like when you have that thing you are envisioning.

2.  Know WHY you want it.  Write it down. The purpose of why you’re going after what you want is actually extremely critical.  I kept thinking to myself all of these years, “Hellz, I don’t need to write down why I want that.  It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Well, after doing some documenting about why I want some of the goals I stated, I realized that the reason I thought was so important wasn’t compelling to me at all.  No wonder I wasn’t making progress towards my goals!  (Example:  I said that I wanted to weigh 108 pounds and my reason was:  “Because I want to look good.”

Nooooo, duh!  I realized that I needed to have WAY MORE reasons about why it’s important for me to want to look good so I have a reason to haul my butt out to get some exercise and a reason to say “no” to that fifth slice of pizza with the delicious extra cheese and extra sauce.  (Hmmm…I definitely have more work to do in coming up with compelling reasons to weigh 108!)

By mastering the art of creating a vision and systematically breaking that vision down into manageable, bite-sized pieces, anyone can accomplish anything, I truly believe that.

The challenge is to be able to manage all of those bite-sized pieces so they don’t get lost in the shuffle. 

I’m looking forward to taking my Goals Management Frankenstein-system out on the town.  I’ll let ya know how it goes!

Anyway, on one particular occasion, I came to her about a job offer.  I told her that I wasn’t sure I was experienced enough for the job, I didn’t feel like I would live up to their expectations and frankly, it seemed like too much work for me to learn something new…She cut me off before I could rattle off more reasons why I probably should not take the job and said it was all BS.  She told me that she knew for a fact that I would be successful at ANYTHING I set myself to do.  Then she wrote on a small piece of paper and handed it to me (I still have that little piece of paper in a file somewhere).  In capital letters, she wrote, “TRUST THE PROCESS”.  Hell.  What process?  How in crimany am I to find it?  Where are the steps to follow?  No answers.  (Pshh).  I’m better off staying where I’m at than trying to figure out some secret process.  (Pshh).

Needless to say, I took the job and all the while, told myself to ‘trust the process’- whatever that meant.  Well, I’ve found the process is this:  It starts with going in to the unknown, not knowing whether or not you will be successful.  You are following the process when you keep moving forward even as you realize that you still won’t know everything about everything.  It continues as you learn to quickly regurgitate information for a customer or reiterate instructions stated in an emergency meeting.  Until it comes to you: you have finally experienced and learned enough about your job.  And when you come across the stuff about your job that you don’t know, well you just TRUST THE PROCESS until you do.

Many years later, I still tell myself to ‘trust the process’.  So when I am hosting a conference call with presidents of several companies around the globe involved in the type approval of a product I am entirely unfamiliar with, instead of telling myself, “I have no idea what the product is!”, or “How am I going to facilitate the call?”, I simply take the lead by first regurgitating the little bit of information they gave me and then asking for volunteers to chime in, all the while trusting the process and knowing it will soon work itself out.

So my advice to you today is when you feel you don’t have enough know-how to move forward, try trusting the process and see how things pan out for you.  Trust me, you’ll be presently surprised at how much you can accomplish.