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!