Writing out your Dreams to Set up Goals
Alright, so you have decided to start a business and have a vision of where you want to take your entrepreneurship.
There is a fun exercise designed to add excitement to your career vision: a bucket list, if you will.
Have you always thought a bucket list filled with experiences like “swimming with dolphins”, “spending a year in India” or “meeting Ryan Gosling” was completely unrelated to your business?
Think again.
The reason I like this exercise is because as an entrepreneur, your business becomes your life, in a way…
Therefore, putting together a list of things that you wish to experience – integrating those into your long-term goals as part of your MOTIVATION – is crucial to living the life of your dreams.
Suspend disbelief for a few moments and pretend that you’re a kid again…
- Nobody has told you that anything is impossible yet.
- Nobody told you that you couldn’t make money doing what you love.
- Nobody has influenced your personal beliefs or values.
- Nobody has led you to believe you HAD to live a certain way.
You can still go to the moon as far as you are concerned.
In that state, let’s uncover some things that maybe you’ve forgotten you wanted to do and list the hell out of it…
Get out a pen and paper (yes, old-fashioned, I know) and create your bucket list:
Category 1 – Your personal goals
- What do you want to learn or experience in your life?
- Which skills do you wanna master or emotions do you wanna master?
- Who do you want to be as a person?
- Do you want to learn a language or do you want to run America?
Category 2 – Your finances & career
- How much money do you want to have in the bank?
- When do you want to retire?
- Do you want to be the head of a company or stay a freelancer?
- What sort of flexibility do you want with your money?
Category 3 – Your belongings
- What sort of toys do you want to own?
- What type of home do you want?
Dream big!!
Category 4 – Your legacy
- What do you want to leave behind? For your kids, or to charity?
- What sort of contribution are you going to make throughout your life?
- How much time do you want to be able to volunteer?
Once you’ve got all of that down, assuming again that everything is possible, are those items that you can do within the next year, the next 3 years or just some time in your lifetime?
Remember, a dream without a plan remains a wish. A dream with a deadline becomes a goal.
So label everything with a timeline and solidify the short term goals – start working towards those!
You want to be the guy/gal who just went for it, right?
So, turn them those dreams into SMART goals: make sure that they are Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound, so you can start tracking them.
A great read on SMART goals is “Set Smart Goals for Success” by the wonderful people at Team Tony Robbins!
Take 1 action towards your #1 goal today – and write it down in the comments below!
Ready to take it a step further? Get my top secrets here.