Setting Long Term Goals

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about setting and sticking to long term goals, it’s harder, for some of us, to set goals that are 5 or 10 years out: life gets in the way. As I do here every December, I’m writing a series of posts to talk about getting ready to make the New Year a successful one and setting long term goals. Let’s review my last two basic points, as they pertain to longer term goals and then I’ll give you a few more concepts to put into play.

Goals, for one thing, have to be true to your core values and have to be something that make your soul happy. If you want to become a musician, if that’s what is calling you, setting a long term goal to become a civil engineer is going to require a lot more discipline and a lot more energy; going against your very nature is not an easy thing to do. If you value honesty, sincerity and helping others, a long term goal to become the world’s best aluminum siding salesman might be a hard road to take.

Long term goals are about synchronicity, about lining up your heart and the “coincidences” that life presents to you. You need to be “in tune” to recognize the opportunities that present themselves, things you might otherwise miss. The Secret got it right when it said that you attract things into your life, only I don’t believe it is always in a supernatural way. Sometimes we are in a better state of mind to notice things that have been there for us all along. Let’s say that you have decided to go to the showroom and look at a new Toyota Prius. On your way to the dealership, you’ll notice a LOT of Toyota Prius’s, as if everyone is suddenly driving them. They didn’t appear by magic, you were just in a state of mind to notice them. When you are in tune with your heart, with your life’s purpose, opportunities abound, you seem to be plugged in.

Second, goals are not resolutions, they are not wishes. Goals have to be tied to actions, preferably to daily actions. If your goal is to win the lottery, you have to buy the lottery ticket. If you want to become a doctor, you have to go to college, go to med school, do your residency and you have to do all these things well and do them every day. Actions are required and breaking down your long term goals into daily actions is especially required. If a goal is truly important to you, the steps along the way are just that steps, not impediments.

The noted investor Warren Buffet was teased about being “cheap” when he was younger. Warren’s long term goal was to own a really big investment portfolio and nothing was going to deter him. He didn’t even want to buy a family home because he realized that the funds required to buy a house would earn a better return in his portfolio. This might seem extreme to most of us, but Warren had a goal and nothing was going to deter him: along with his brilliance we need to remember that Warren Buffet is one determined and focused guy.

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes our brain 10,000 hours to truly master something. Successful people put in the time, they do what other successful people do. I’ll leave the definition of success up to you, but let’s agree that no matter what you want to be successful at, you need to focus on it and put in the time. If I were going to drive from my home here in Florida to Boston for some clam chowder, I’d get out my navigation device, fill the car with gas and start driving. The journey may involve anything from flat tires to surprising encounters with new people, that’s fine, but I am focused on the chowder. My headlights will light up only about the next 500 feet of road and I keep driving, even if I can’t see the next 500 feet.

I won’t decide, halfway through my journey, to head for Chicago or to stop and live in North Carolina for a while. Not if my goal of getting chowder in Boston was something I was focused on accomplishing. (If it was to get that awful tomato based Manhattan Chowder, the first red light that took too long to change would dissuade me and I’d turn around. That’s why the goal has to be true to your heart.) Hopefully; I’ll remember to enjoy the journey, but I’m not going to be deterred if I don’t. I’m going to put in my hours and move forward towards my goal, if it rains, if there are traffic jams, if I get distracted by some wonderful Crab Bisque in Maryland…

Along the way, I’ll be thinking about the chowder. I’ll imagine it being so thick that spoon will actually stand up in the middle of the mug. I’ll think about the bits of celery and clams, and, of course, the potatoes. I’ll even imagine having to brush it off my chin with a nice cloth napkin. (We aren’t really talking about chowder anymore).

Try this exercise: Go get quiet, maybe with a little meditative music, go someplace where you can be alone for a little while. Now, I want you to imagine it is your 110th birthday and meditate what a movie about your life would be like. Let yourself go as deep as you can, imagine that your descendants have all gathered, in your honor, to talk about your achievements in your lifetime. They’re going to talk about how much you mean to them. Feel it, feel their love, their admiration. What were your accomplishments? I’m willing to bet, you’ll figure out what is really important to you in this process.

Visualization is a powerful factor in goal setting, you can trick your brain into thinking that you have experienced something if you think about it enough. I’ve attended a few “Come as you’ll be in 5 year parties” with my mentor, Jack Canfield. This is an evening where everyone pretends it is 5 years later and talks about everything they’ve done in the last 5 years. As odd as it sounds, this is an amazingly powerful exercise, in my experience, my brain bought right into my fantasies. The next morning I found that my goals for the next five years seemed pretty close, I actually believed, at least a part of me believed I had already accomplished the things I was bragging about at the party.

Talent is the ability to do something easily. Sometimes, having things come easily to you is a curse, you think everything should come to you easily. (I know about this). Sometimes being a grinder, someone who doesn’t know enough to quit is the way to go and long term goals are about having a destination in mind that sees speed bumps when others see road blocks. Someone who plugs along, doing the work, putting in their 10,000 hours is the person who wakes up one day in Boston having that chowder.

This is a great video by Brian Tracy, even if the camera angle is a little strange: